If a person is sentenced to a term of imprisonment not exceeding six months, he or she has a possibility to serve the prison sentence outside prison through intensive supervision with electronic monitoring. The main rule is to grant such an application. An application may however not be granted if there are special grounds which argue against enforcement outside prison. In its ruling, the Supreme Administrative Court has assessed if the need for an interpreter constitutes special grounds.
In this case, The Swedish Prison and Probation Service stated that the sentenced person could not communicate with the probation service without an interpreter, that the probation service must be able to immediately contact the sentenced person and that it could not be ensured that an interpreter would be available on these occasions. The Court found no cause to question this information. Since the supervision of the sentenced person therefore could not be carried out in the manner presupposed in the Intensive Supervision Using Electronic Monitoring Act, there were, in the view of the Court, special grounds which argued against enforcement of the prison sentence outside prison.
Read the judgment here: