Questionnaire Sweden
I.51 For what types?
There are no general or more specific instructions
concerning the question what sentence should be requested by the prosecutor in
the court. The prosecutor’s requests are usually based on the sentencing
praxis. However, as far as some categories of offences are concerned, the Office
of the Prosecutor General has issued guidelines concerning prosecution of these
categories of offences. These guidelines contain sometimes instructions – in
very general terms – as regards the sentence that should be requested in court.
For example, the Memorandum and guidelines concerning prosecution of hate
crimes has been issued by the Decision of the Prosecutor General (November 12th,
2002), in which it is laid down that the prosecutors, requesting a sentence for
this category of offences in court, should ever consider if there are not
reasons to request imprisonment. This Memorandum has been published (www.aklagare.se),
but normally, this kind of guidelines, if any, is not public. It means that it
is very difficult to obtain a survey of such instructions. There are no
statistics of whether the prosecutors’ sentencing proposals differ from the
courts’ sentencing practice and in what extend. However, the general impression
one get is that the prosecutors regularly request more severe punishments than
the courts impose.
