This chapter provides a comprehensive overview of the system of day fines in Croatia. Before explaining the current legal framework, it describes the historical role of the fine as a criminal punishment in Croatia and elucidates the reasons which in 1997 led to the switch from the system of fixed fines to day fines. This fundamental change sought not only to modernize fine as punishment, but also to address a sharply negative trend in the number of pronounced fines, which started in the early 1990s. Yet, the latter was not achieved as the share of fines in the overall percentage of criminal sanctions continued to decline. In 2011 an entirely new Criminal Code significantly amended the regulation of the fine, as systematically outlined in this chapter. One of the main goals of this reform was to avoid reliance of judges on the average daily income instead of determining the real income of the perpetrator – a legally-provided exception which quickly became a rule, thus negating the essence of the system of day fines. The 2011 legislative improvements, however, did not contribute to its increased use, leading to conclusion that the system of day fines has not yet become deep-rooted in Croatia.

In 1921, Finland was the first Nordic country to introduce the day fine system into its system of criminal sanctions. The main reason for adopting the new system was an attempt to introduce a system where fines would have an equal impact on people with varying means.An important objective of the total reform of Finnish criminal law (1980–2003) was to reduce of custodial sentences and, therefore, the increased use of financial sanctions had a preference. In a comparative analysis day fines are imposed to very great extent in Finland.There has been a general satisfaction with the fining system in Finland.The efficiency of the day fine system has been furthered by the detailed provisions on the assessment of the person’s income and the effective enforcement of fines. As for the future of the fining system, there is an urgent need of coordinating various punitive pecuniary sanctions (whether they are criminal in nature or administrative and whether they are day fines or fixed fines).