The Prosecutor General’s Office (PGO) suggests that drunk driving without serious consequences for the life and health of a person should be moved from the category of criminal offences to the category of contraventions, but the punishment for this should be harsher. Also, the institution proposes banning the unjustified stopping of the vehicle by patrol agents. The suggestions form part of legislative proposals that were presented by Prosecutor General Alexandr Stoianoglo on September 20, IPN reports.
Alexandr Stoianoglo told a news conference that a broad criminological study carried out recently by PGO shows that in particular cases, the penal policy of the state is absolutely inefficient and also very costly.
The prosecutor general noted that statistics point to an increase in the number of cases of driving under the influence, from 4,013 in 2019 to 4,410 in 2020. Of all the offenses recorded last year, 16.7% were cases of drunk driving. Moreover, in 2019 alone, the common law courts passed a total of 11,000 sentences and about 4,000 of these were namely for this type of offenses.
“The fact that the pace increases and the number of cases grows no matter how many people are punished criminally is serious. This shows that the penal policy of the state in the field is fully inefficient,” said Alexandr Stoianoglo.
According to him, the Government and the Ministry of the Interior should focus more on aspects of education and should work out a set of preventive measures. But the punishments for this type of deviations should be harsher.
Alexandr Stoianoglo also said that those who will drive under the influence of alcohol or drugs and will cause a road accident with serious consequences for the life and health of a person will continue to be held criminally accountable. If the accident is caused by a person who had been earlier convicted of similar offenses, the used unit of transport will be confiscated. In the other cases, in the absence of serious consequences, the motorist will be punished with fine, community service or up to 15 years in jail, in all the cases with ban on driving for a period of six months to three years.
