The draft amendments to the Criminal Code of the Republika Srpska (RS), which stipulates that a prison sentence of up to one year can be paid off by anyone, if they wish, instead of it being decided by a court, should be presented to the members of the National Assembly of RS (NARS) at the next session.
Up until now, the court has decided on who among those convicted of up to 12 months can replace a prison sentence with a fine, and the amendments stipulate that anyone sentenced to a year or less can automatically do so.
“A sentence of imprisonment that does not exceed one year of imprisonment will be replaced by a fine at the request of the convicted person,” reads the draft amendments to the Criminal Code of the RS published on the website of the Ministry of Justice of RS.
Milan Malesevic, a lawyer from Banja Luka, says that little is changed by the amendments to the law because until now the courts have mostly accepted requests for paying off the fines since they had no grounds to reject them.
“The first thing that is disputed is the way in which this provision entered the legislation of RS, changing its protective function, its basic principles established by the legal system, especially the criminal law, such as the principle of fairness and the principle of non-discrimination,” said Malesevic.
The Prime Minister of RS Radovan Viskovic said that the Government had many requests from the judiciary to change this provision.
“They called us from the courts because the prison capacity is overcrowded,” says Viskovic.
The Prime Minister of RS rejects the statement that the possibility of paying off the sentence is used by those convicted of corruption, Detektor reports.
E.Dz.
