Reporting duty

Case no. 105/2020
Judgment delivered on 22 March 2021

The Public Prosecutor
vs.
T

The question before the Supreme Court was whether an alien, T, could be punished for having violated his reporting duty 165 times from 1 August 2018 to 19 August 2019.

In 2005, T was sentenced to prison for seven years for serious assaults and expelled from Denmark with a permanent entry ban. In 2007, the immigration authorities decided that T could not be deported to his home country. In connection with his subsequent parole in 2008, he was ordered to reside at and report to the accommodation centre Center Sandholm. This was later changed several times, and in 2017, his reporting duty was lifted. On 1 August 2018, he was ordered to report to the Copenhagen Police at the Copenhagen Central Station on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays between 10 a.m. and 5 p.m.

The Supreme Court stated that, for a person with exceptional leave to remain in Denmark, the reporting duty is a prerequisite for being allowed to stay in this country although he has been expelled. T had been ordered to report three times a week to the police at the Copenhagen Central Station which was only a few kilometres from the residence he shared with his spouse and their two children. The Supreme Court held that the reporting duty did not amount to a disproportionate restriction of his right to respect for his private life or family life under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights or – in respect of the period up to 1 May 2019 – his freedom of movement under Article 2 of Protocol No. 4 to the Convention which, according to the travaux préparatoires for the Danish Aliens Act, applied to people with exceptional leave to remain in Denmark at the time.

Warnings had previously been issued to T for not observing his reporting duty, most recently in January 2018. The Supreme Court held that the principle of the recognition of previous convictions should apply to this warning, and that the sentence, as claimed by the Prosecution Service, should consider this the second offence. The Supreme Court thus increased his sentence to imprisonment for seven months. Furthermore, the Supreme Court affirmed the expulsion with a six-year entry ban due to T's violation of his reporting duty.

The High Court had reached a different conclusion with regard to the sentence.