Halland District Courts was not close to handing out a maximum penalty for drunk driving or aggravated drunk driving in 2020.
- With such long prison sentences, it is required that a large number of crimes are dealt with on each occasion.
Usually it is one or a few drunken driving and it leads to one or a few months in prison, says Mats Sjösten, judge and head of authority at Varberg District Court.
More than half of the crimes were judged to be serious
According to him, it also looks like that in the country's district courts in general.
For aggravated drunk driving, the penalty is imprisonment for a minimum of 14 days and a maximum of two years in prison.
More than half of the drunk driving offenses in Halland District Courts in 2020 were judged to be serious.
Despite this, more than half of them escaped some form of imprisonment.
Drunk driving is a species crime and imprisonment should generally be imposed.
But the Supreme Court's guidelines and practice at the top mean that this rarely happens.
- Penalties are a thicket, says Mats Sjösten.
Can lead to different penalties
Drunk driving offenses can, depending on the person's individual circumstances, lead to different penalties.
Examples can be found in the fact box below.
If it is not a particularly dangerous traffic situation and if the blood alcohol content is less than 1.5 per mille, it is therefore common for the sanction to be probation or a conditional sentence and community service.
In the clip, Mats Sjösten talks about penalties.