Substitute term of imprisonment is halved

Anyone who fails to pay a fine must serve an alter­na­tive term of impri­son­ment. Until now, the rule was that one day’s impri­son­ment was served for every day’s fine imposed. This will now change.

Accor­ding to § 43 S. 1 StGB, an irre­co­verable fine will be replaced by a custo­dial sentence. This means that if the convicted person does not pay the fine imposed on him, a custo­dial sentence can be enforced against him.

Accor­ding to the provi­sion of Section 43 p. 2 StGB, one day’s sentence is equi­va­lent to one day’s impri­son­ment.

Accor­ding to the previous legal situa­tion, a substi­tute custo­dial sentence was ther­e­fore enforced at a ratio of 1:1. For each daily sentence, the convicted person had to serve one day in custody. For example, if he had been sentenced to a fine of 60 daily rates, he had to spend 60 days in custody.

This legal regu­la­tion has been highly contro­ver­sial for years. Thus, accor­ding to the prin­ciple of guilt enshrined in the consti­tu­tion, the punish­ment must not exceed the measure of guilt.

The reason for this is the fact that a custo­dial sentence is a signi­fi­cantly stronger sanc­tion in compa­rison to a mone­tary penalty In addi­tion, in many cases the substi­tute custo­dial sentence is only enforced due to poor economic circum­s­tances. Convicted persons who are finan­ci­ally unable to serve the fine are thus placed at a considerable disad­van­tage.

At the end of June this year, the Bundestag decided — after exten­sive debate — to amend the criminal sanc­tions law and, among other things, to halve the conver­sion rate from fine to alter­na­tive custody. If a defen­dant has been sentenced to a fine of 60 daily rates, he will now only have to spend 30 days in alter­na­tive custody.

Further­more, sentenced persons are to be supported in avoi­ding a substi­tute custo­dial sentence. In future, those affected must be expressly informed of the possi­bi­lity of performing commu­nity service as an alter­na­tive to impri­son­ment. In the context of supple­ments to enforce­ment law, more social work measures should also take place, by means of which, for example, the possi­bi­lity of an install­ment payment agree­ment with the convicted person can be pursued.

The amend­ment should come into force on October 1, 2023.

Due to previously neces­sary adjus­t­ments in the area of IT, the halving of the alter­na­tive custo­dial sentence was post­poned by four months. Thus, imple­men­ta­tion of the neces­sary conver­sions in the computer systems of the federal states, in parti­cular the modules of the penalty period calcu­la­tion in the used specia­lized proce­dure “web.sta”, should only be possible by 01.02.2024.