The longest criminal punishment for offenders aged between 18 and 21 is reduced by one third. Such a provision is contained in a bill that humanizes the criminal policy. The bill was passed by Parliament in the first reading on December 8, IPN reports.
If the court reaches the conclusion that the goal can be reached only by applying the punishment in the general limits, this can impose a punishment in the limits envisioned by the law. The necessity of applying the punishment in the general limits is to be justified by the court of law.
There is introduced a new type of punishment – conviction with partial suspension of the jail term. Thus, if the court, taking into account the circumstances of the case and the backgrounds of the person to blame, reaches the conclusion that it is not reasonable for this to serve the whole time in jail, this can cut a part of the jail term. In the case of minor or less grave offenses, the part of the punishment that must be served in jail can be reduced to a minimum.
Another provision of the bill refers to the detention conditions. The convicts who were held in inhuman conditions for at least ten days can ask to have their punishment reduced. If the time that is yet to be served in jail does not enable to fully deduct the punishment reduction or the period of the violation is shorter than 10 days, the convict can ask for pecuniary damages.
Under the informative note to the bill, the humanization level of the criminal policy of a state is often measured by the number of convictions per capita. In Moldova, this indicator is twice higher than the average in the Council of Europe member states. Deputy Minister of Justice Anatolie Munteanu said there were 227 detainees per 100,000 people in Moldova at the start of 2016. Also, Moldova has a relatively low rate of offenses per capita and the number of convictions is also low. Therefore, the cause for crowdedness in jails is the excessive length of the jail term.
Anatolie Munteanu noted that more than one third of the convicts who now serve time in jail were sentenced to more than 10 years in prison. Moldova also lost 118 cases at the ECHR, 70 of which refer to inhuman detention conditions.
