The upcoming amendment to the Criminal Code is criticized by experts | iRADIO

• The Ministry of Justice is preparing a reform of the Criminal Code, expert chambers, departments and courts are reminding it.
• The office under the leadership of Minister Pavel Blažek (ODS) has announced that it wants to achieve a reduction in the number of prisoners who end up behind bars, for example due to trivial criminal activities. Nevertheless, it also significantly affects criminal rates in economic crime, which is more typical for so-called white-collar workers.
• Courts would now be able to impose significantly lighter sentences on them, even for extensive property crimes.
• In their observations, experts, the public prosecutor’s office and the Supreme Court warn against the destabilization of society and point out that loosening the rules will give criminals the opportunity to “redeem” themselves from criminal activity. But the Department of Justice refuses.

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Prague
5:00 a.m May 7, 2024

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Back in the autumn of last year, the former Deputy Minister of Justice Antonín Stanislav indicated in a broadcast of Radiožurnál that the aim of the amendment to the Criminal Code is mainly to reduce the number of prisoners who ended up behind bars due to the repetition of so-called petty crimes – that is, those where only minor damage was caused.

“First of all, we would like to focus on a preventive punishment system rather than having prisons for pickpockets. We believe that these persons should not be in prison,” said Stanislav at the time.

According to Jakub Drápal, an expert in criminal law from the Faculty of Law of the Charles University, certain parts of the amendment can have this effect. “Selected parts of the amendment, for example the reduction of penalties for repeat thefts or the partial decriminalization of non-payment of child support, will certainly lead to a reduction in the prison population,” he states.

But lawyer Věnek Bonuš from the State Reconstruction organization points out that the amendment also changes other parts of the criminal code. And that in areas where the effect on reducing the number of prisoners, even according to lawyer Drápal, is significantly smaller – in economic crime.

“However, some rates in economic crime are being reduced and, in addition, the rules for imposing so-called alternative punishments are relatively relaxed (suspended sentence, monetary penalty, community service – editor’s note). This means that it will be possible to impose alternative punishments independently, without imposing a prison sentence, even for more serious crimes than has been the case so far,” Bonuš points out.

Do not punish with prison

At the same time, large-scale economic crimes are usually not committed by pickpockets, but rather by so-called “white-collar workers” – for example, company owners or managers or high-ranking civil servants. However, according to the available data, they end up behind bars rather exceptionally. Until now, the courts had to punish them with prison if the damage they caused exceeded a certain limit. For example, in the case of damage over ten million crowns (damage of a large scale), the court punished with a rate of 5 to 10 years.

But thanks to the amendment to the criminal code, “white-collar workers” could avoid prison even in such cases. “If I simplify it a bit, the judge will now have many more options on how not to legally send a person who has committed an economic crime to prison,” explains Bonuš.

But Vladimír Řepka, the spokesman for the Department of Justice, rejects this. “The proposed change will not result in disproportionately lenient sentences being imposed. It still applies that a monetary penalty may be imposed as a separate penalty only if, given the nature and seriousness of the crime committed and the person and circumstances of the perpetrator, there is no need to impose another penalty,” Řepka points out.

Bonuš acknowledges that the possibility of punishing economic crime with prison remains in the Criminal Code. In one breath, however, he points out that this was not originally the intention of the Ministry of Justice.

“Much more controversial changes have already been dropped from the amendment, which would mean that for selected criminal activities – if certain conditions are met, such as repayment of damages and payment to victims – the court would only have to impose a separate monetary penalty. It would not be possible to punish with imprisonment. That was the version that went so far in not punishing white-collar crime that it was surprising,” says Bonuš.

At that time, lawyer Jan Dupák from Transparency International also became familiar with the variant, who mentioned it in the preparatory process. “He informed at the meeting at the end of last year (former)Deputy Minister of Justice Antonín Stanislav that the upcoming amendment to the Criminal Code should also eliminate prison sentences for economic crimes,” lawyer Dupák confirms Bonuš’s words.

“The amendment as such is a step in the right direction and the move away from criminal repression makes sense, but we unequivocally rejected this one point immediately, because Czech prisons are certainly not full of white-collar criminals and we consider the threat of prison in serious cases to be an important preventive measure,” he describes the situation in the fall of 2023, with the fact that the organization Transparency International did not receive any more documents, so in the end it was possible to stop the plan.

‘Wallets’ for anything?

What remains from the original version of the amendment is, on the one hand, the reduction of the penalty rate even for serious criminal activity, but also the already mentioned possibility of judges to award a monetary penalty “for any crime”. “In particular, they will consider imposing it if the perpetrator obtained or tried to obtain a financial benefit for himself or for another through an intentional criminal act,” the amendment states.

“This does not mean anything other than that this punishment will theoretically be imposed for any crime. Therefore, the Criminal Code a priori will not exclude the imposition of this type of punishment for any crime. This does not in any way change the rules for how punishments can be combined, when they can be imposed separately and when in conjunction with other types of punishments,” spokesperson Řepka explains the amendment.

According to him, this is a measure that will lead to greater efficiency and speed of the entire criminal procedure, greater possibilities of imposing short-term or alternative punishments, and should also help victims who, thanks to the expansion of the possibility of awarding monetary penalties, can more easily get their rights.

However, according to lawyer Bonuš, the wider possibility of imposing overly lenient sentences can lead to impacts on the entire society.

“I am afraid that if someone causes damage to the state of more than 10 million crowns, it is therefore a serious economic crime, for example fraud, and then he does not go to prison, even though there are no significant mitigating circumstances, so this will shake the public’s confidence in justice. In the fact that equality before the law applies here and that the state is able to punish not only trivial crimes, but also those who commit big frauds,” he explains.

‘He will redeem himself’

According to the submitted comments, the Supreme Court also shares similar concerns. “Such loosening of the rules has a clear potential to destabilize society and its values. Already today, a number of attacks against the judiciary can be recorded due to the alleged too mild penalty for a number of serious crimes,” the court writes.

He also points to the fact that loosening the rules will lead to greater differences in what sentences judges will hand down for the same crimes across the court system. “The final sentence imposed on the offender will depend more than ever on their discretion based on only abstractly established rules, within which each of the courts will prioritize different parameters,” warns the Supreme Court.

The prepared amendment is also criticized by the Ministry of the Interior. Although this recognizes that a monetary penalty will reliably affect the majority of offenders, the amendment does not deal with the question of whether it is a sufficient punishment precisely for crimes with a high level of social harm – for example, fraud or corruption.

“From the point of view of some perpetrators, it can be a form of ‘financial redemption from a crime’. The question is whether such a procedure therefore does not conflict with the international obligations of the Czech Republic,” the ministry writes, referring to the Criminal Law Convention on Corruption, which calls for the punishment of prison terms for corruption.

The Supreme Public Prosecutor’s Office also warns against the fact that the proposed change in the awarding of monetary penalties may, as a result, enable the courts to impose a separate monetary penalty in the minimum amount even for the most serious economic criminal activity. “The draft does not limit its lower limit in any way,” adds the prosecutor’s office.

Tomas Pika

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