Finnish Military Discipline Act (331/1983) – The Disciplinary Procedure and its Quality
Abstract
This article deals with the disciplinary procedure in the Finnish Defence Forces. The article examines the disciplinary procedure, reasons for the existence of it and the nature of the procedure (administrative or criminal procedure). The annual number of military crimes in Finland is between 4500 and 5500. Over 95 % of these crimes are committed by conscripts (25 000 conscripts per year).
Furthermore, the article includes an analysis of 380 disciplinary procedures. The aim of this empirical section is to find out possible qualitative problems (i.e. the procedure does not meet the essential requirements of the legislation) in the procedure. The possible problems have been categorized into twelve different types of errors (e.g. a delay and an omission of hearing) and the occurrence of each type of error has been examined. The empirical section also introduces how the incidence of procedures varies during a calendar year, conclusions of the procedures (disciplinary punishment or reprimand, a stay of proceedings, assigned to prosecutor, pending or unfinished) and how the average incidence of errors varies between 13 units.
In this article, it is argued that there are qualitative problems in the disciplinary procedure based on the Military Discipline Act. The most often occurred errors are a delay (N=46), an omission of hearing (44) and insufficient enforcement entries (39). The most problematic errors concern those penal provisions of the criminal law that obtain their exact content from lower hierarchy regulations. In addition, problems arise concerning the recognition of the essential elements of each type of offence and exceeding of jurisdiction. However, these most severe and problematic errors are not among the errors met most frequently. On the contrary, it seems that in practice there are no problems whatsoever with the measurement of sanctions. The rate of stay of proceedings (42) also indicates that the authority is exercising real consideration.
