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Throughout the totalitarian rule of the regime of Slobodan Milošević and his henchmen, which lasted for over a decade, the country’s prisons remained shut to public scrutiny. Information about the state of human rights of the prisoners and the conditions in which they served their sentences was the exclusive privilege of the state authorities directly involved and of the individuals and institutions concerned with the matter for purposes of scientific research. The question of prisoners’ human rights was completely marginalized by war, crimes, economic hardship and daily violations of citizens’ human rights and freedoms up to 5 October 2000. For many a convict, being locked away to serve a sentence of imprisonment did not mean mere deprivation of liberty for a set period of time, but also the start of a cruel struggle for survival in the gloom of lawlessness, corruption, torture, inhuman conditions and society’s total lack of interest in his or her life behind bars. It was only after widespread prison rioting broke out in November 2000 that the public’s attention was drawn to the conditions in which the prisoners served their sentences. The prisoners put out announcements throwing light on the substandard and inhuman conditions prevailing in Serbia’s penitentiaries and prisons. During the riots, groups and individual prisoners made statements complaining that the prison conditions were far below the levels set by relevant international standards and domestic prison rules. The prisoners alleged serious violations of their physical and psychological integrity, humiliating and degrading treatment, unjust punishment and general arbitrary treatment by prison personnel. They complained of, among other things, torture by beating, lack of minimum personal hygiene facilities, absence of medical treatment and health care, and corruption among prison administrative staff. Some of the allegations and complaints were partly confirmed by competent officials of the Ministry of Justice. As a palliative for the utterly unsatisfactory prison conditions, federal and republican amnesty laws were duly introduced to be finally adopted respectively on 26 February 2001 and 13 February 2001. Nonetheless, although a number of convicts were fully amnestied and a percentage of sentences commuted, the conditions in which prisoners served their sentenced remained unchanged. In addition to the factors mentioned above, the inhuman conditions in Serbia’s prisons endured and multiplied also owing to the country’s isolation of many years, during which time no international organization other than the International Red Cross was granted access to its prisons. Domestic non-governmental organizations were also kept at arm’s length and only rarely allowed to see what went on inside. In view of the circumstances enumerated above, it was clearly necessary to introduce continuous monitoring of prisons by an independent, non-governmental institution in order to obtain a realistic picture of the prison conditions. The new government is aware that admission to the Council of Europe and to other international organizations depends in part on the conditions in which sentenced persons serve their prison sentences, as well as that the public must be informed about those conditions. So, after presenting the concept and objectives of the Prison Monitoring project, the Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Serbia was granted permission in May 2001 to visit institutions for the enforcement of criminal sanctions. This meant that for the first time in the history of this state an NGO could apply for and be granted permission to visit places of detention, custody and imprisonment without any restrictions, to interview prisoners with no personnel being present, and to talk to personnel without the presence of administration officers. Between June 2001 and October 2003, the Helsinki Committee paid a total of twenty-one visits to institutions for the enforcement of sanctions entailing the deprivation of liberty. During the period covered by this report (April 2002 to October 2003) the Helsinki Committee visited twelve institutions (one maximum-security prison, two closed prisons, three open prisons, two district prisons, one psychiatric prison, one reformatory, and one juvenile prison). In launching the project, the Helsinki Committee was principally guided by Article 64 of the European Prison Rules which states: ‘Imprisonment is by the deprivation of liberty a punishment in itself. The conditions of imprisonment and the prison regimes shall not, therefore, except as incidental to justifiable segregation or the maintenance of discipline, aggravate the suffering inherent in this.’ The Helsinki Committee hopes that its efforts to complete the project and publish this book will make a small but valuable contribution towards achieving this goal.
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Throughout the totalitarian rule of the regime of Slobodan Milošević and his henchmen, which lasted for over a decade, the country’s prisons remained shut to public scrutiny. Information about the state of human rights of the prisoners and the conditions in which they served their sentences was the exclusive privilege of the state authorities directly involved and of the individuals and institutions concerned with the matter for purposes of scientific research. The question of prisoners’ human rights was completely marginalized by war, crimes, economic hardship and daily violations of citizens’ human rights and freedoms up to 5 October 2000. For many a convict, being locked away to serve a sentence of imprisonment did not mean mere deprivation of liberty for a set period of time, but also the start of a cruel struggle for survival in the gloom of lawlessness, corruption, torture, inhuman conditions and society’s total lack of interest in his or her life behind bars. It was only after widespread prison rioting broke out in November 2000 that the public’s attention was drawn to the conditions in which the prisoners served their sentences. The prisoners put out announcements throwing light on the substandard and inhuman conditions prevailing in Serbia’s penitentiaries and prisons. During the riots, groups and individual prisoners made statements complaining that the prison conditions were far below the levels set by relevant international standards and domestic prison rules. The prisoners alleged serious violations of their physical and psychological integrity, humiliating and degrading treatment, unjust punishment and general arbitrary treatment by prison personnel. They complained of, among other things, torture by beating, lack of minimum personal hygiene facilities, absence of medical treatment and health care, and corruption among prison administrative staff. Some of the allegations and complaints were partly confirmed by competent officials of the Ministry of Justice. As a palliative for the utterly unsatisfactory prison conditions, federal and republican amnesty laws were duly introduced to be finally adopted respectively on 26 February 2001 and 13 February 2001. Nonetheless, although a number of convicts were fully amnestied and a percentage of sentences commuted, the conditions in which prisoners served their sentenced remained unchanged. In addition to the factors mentioned above, the inhuman conditions in Serbia’s prisons endured and multiplied also owing to the country’s isolation of many years, during which time no international organization other than the International Red Cross was granted access to its prisons. Domestic non-governmental organizations were also kept at arm’s length and only rarely allowed to see what went on inside. In view of the circumstances enumerated above, it was clearly necessary to introduce continuous monitoring of prisons by an independent, non-governmental institution in order to obtain a realistic picture of the prison conditions. The new government is aware that admission to the Council of Europe and to other international organizations depends in part on the conditions in which sentenced persons serve their prison sentences, as well as that the public must be informed about those conditions. So, after presenting the concept and objectives of the Prison Monitoring project, the Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Serbia was granted permission in May 2001 to visit institutions for the enforcement of criminal sanctions. This meant that for the first time in the history of this state an NGO could apply for and be granted permission to visit places of detention, custody and imprisonment without any restrictions, to interview prisoners with no personnel being present, and to talk to personnel without the presence of administration officers. Between June 2001 and October 2003, the Helsinki Committee paid a total of twenty-one visits to institutions for the enforcement of sanctions entailing the deprivation of liberty. During the period covered by this report (April 2002 to October 2003) the Helsinki Committee visited twelve institutions (one maximum-security prison, two closed prisons, three open prisons, two district prisons, one psychiatric prison, one reformatory, and one juvenile prison). In launching the project, the Helsinki Committee was principally guided by Article 64 of the European Prison Rules which states: ‘Imprisonment is by the deprivation of liberty a punishment in itself. The conditions of imprisonment and the prison regimes shall not, therefore, except as incidental to justifiable segregation or the maintenance of discipline, aggravate the suffering inherent in this.’ The Helsinki Committee hopes that its efforts to complete the project and publish this book will make a small but valuable contribution towards achieving this goal.
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Environmental crime is a serious and growing international problem, and one which takes many different forms. Broadly speaking, wildlife crime is the illegal exploitation of the world’s wild flora and fauna, while pollution crime is the trading and disposal of hazardous wastes or resources in contravention of national and international laws. The international prefix of this variety of criminal activities necessarily caused a reaction of International Criminal Police Organization INTERPOL which has been focusing efforts of its 190 member countries methodologically, typologically and standardized in the way the author is about to show in the article. The author directs his attention to connections between environmental crime and other forms of illegal activities, such as: forging of travel documents, corruption, money laundering and offences against life and limb. Danger of fact that environmental crime, especially its forms like wildlife and pollution crime, is carried out by organized criminal networks drawn by the high profit possibilities and low risk to be detected by law enforcement, is combated by INTERPOL efforts to implement its Environmental Crime Programme, which is one of key issues explored in this paper. Activities of INTERPOL through its working groups and operations, jointly driven by member states of the organization aimed at minimizing the detrimental effects of criminal activities regarding endangering and destruction of nowadays man’s environment, is presented by the author, as well.
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Environmental crime is a serious problem and a growing one, and its supression is a considerable challenge both for developed countries and countries in development. In Serbia, until 2004, environmental law was one among the priority areas of reform. However, the EU accession process has put this legal discipline in the fast track, particularly in the part related to the establishment of a criminal law framework of envirmeont protection. It was hence that the Criminal Code of 2005 includes the first systematisation of numerous criminal offences that primarily protect the environment under a single heading, thus justly instituting environment protection as an independent and primary object of protection. The paper indicates the main characteristics of the group of offences against environment as prescribed by the Criminal Code, investiging both substantive and procedural aspects and certain problems related to discovery, evidence and expertise in such cases identified in court practice. In addition, given the Serbian efforts in EU integration, which includes legislative harmonisation, the authors have indicated the importance of EU activities in environment protection.
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Political changes that took place in the USSR in August 1991, when the power of the CPSU collapsed, opened access to archives that had been completely secret before. They also made it possible to collect and analyze evidence of the criminal nature of the soviet system. In the first place, these are documents about the “Great Terror” of 1937–1938 and documents that show how Stalin and the top Politburo figures organized mass killings of hundreds of thousands of people. These documents and statistics of repression had been kept secret from the public even during “perestroika” (1987–1991). Stalin’s crimes seemed to be exposed in those years, and a special commission of Politburo studied the history of repression. To date, efforts of Society Memorial and International Foundation “Democracy” have resulted in the publication of many documents about the soviet terror and mass violation of human rights. For example, the “Democracy” Foundation established by Alexander Yakovlev published more than 50 volumes of documentary collections. Society Memorial released a CD “Stalin’s Shooting Lists”. It includes materials about how Stalin and his closest aides issued death sentences as they took up the role of the judiciary bodies. Another CD released by Memorial contains a database about repressions in the USSR. It includes more than 2.6 million names of the repressed. Th us, we now have the documentary basis for making a legal assessment of the soviet crimes. Important documents are published, such as regulations about repressions, implementation reports, and the total statistics of repressions.
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„My mother had three wishes: returning to Latvia, seeing her brothers and our family and having a flat. All of these wishes have been fulfilled. But even today my mother wakes from a dreadful dream. Again it is night and someone is knocking at the door. Strange men enter and order her to get ready. The deportation nightmare begins, and my mother in despair thinks: “The last time it was a dream. Now it’s real.” On waking she gazes long into the empty night until she calms down and understands: she is home again. In Latvia.“ I have chosen these last lines in Sandra Kalniete’s book With Dance Shoes in Siberian Snows, a book that has been translated into 11 languages, to remind ourselves that the term “crimes against humanity” as a legal abstraction, last defined in Article 7 of the 1998 Rome Statute, is woefully inadequate in terms of fully grasping the human tragedy and its lingering aftermath for which the original crime is only a starting point. The statute concentrates on the perpetrators and their culpability. Any culture of memory must be much more inclusive and never leave sight of the victims and survivors as the direct carriers and inheritors of the memory. It must not only deal with the crime but the entire context in which the crime was perpetrated and even more – the lingering political, social, moral and psychological after-effects. The crime is with us as long as the nightmare persists in the psyches of its victims.
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Conclusion Th e Soviet Union has disintegrated. Disintegration signs originally appeared in 1960s. Practice is an indicator of the theory validity. Practice of the USSR construction has proved non-viability of the communism theory. Thus, the Marxism-Leninism-Stalinism “doctrine” turned out to be an unscientific doctrine. Th is “doctrine” belongs to the sort of sectarian ones. And the communist party that completely professes the principles laying in the construction of the USSR, cannot be considered to be a party, but rather is, a sect. There were different sects in the history of mankind. They gathered groups of people. They established, quite frequently, extremely severe rules of mutual relations between the members of a sect and finally collapsed. The Communist Bolsheviks sect has done a lot of harm to the people of the former USSR. Th e number of human victims in the USSR exceeded the number of victims that the mankind of the world has suffered throughout the history of its existence. It is necessary to understand and realize all the harm caused by communism in order to prevent such a misfortune in future. Therefore, in each country, especially in Ukraine the process of the society differentiation, into extremely rich and extremely poor is fraught with grave consequences. This process of impoverishment can be halted, first of all, by joint actions of the authorities and the society. We should build a society, specifically Ukrainian society of a predominant middle class. Uncontrolled development of oligarchic structures in the country automatically generates an antipode – communism. Therefore, the only way towards a reasonable, sustainable commonwealth is to provide beneficial political and economic conditions for the revival in Ukraine and in all other countries of a prevailing middle class. Revival and comprehensive support – that is what is necessary. Thus the main issue of our conference should be a consolidation of the nations in order to set up an international tribunal over the communism crimes as it has been made over the nazism. We should also find out who is really guilty in committing such severe crimes of communism. It could be those who had provoked Bolsheviks Communist revolt and had introduced communism principles. We should be able to figure it out by being well-informed through: legislation and true history. And to prevent such events in future, it is necessary to severely ban legitimization of the parties professing a criminal Communist ideology. Most important for, each country is to provide such conditions when the middle class of the country determines its national, political and economic development.
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Ukraine is one of the countries which suffered most from the communist regime crimes. Millions of the Ukrainians had been repressed by the communist regime since 1918 when Ukraine was occupied by Bolshevik’s troops till 1991 when at last it gained independence. Ukraine became an experimental ground for communists where they perfected scenarios of seizure of power and repressions against dissidents. Later, after 1939 these scenarios were used in the Baltic States, and since 1945 – in Central and Eastern European States. A well-known lawyer, the author of term Genocide and one of the authors of Convention On Condemnation of Genocides Rafael Lemkin called the communists policy in Ukraine a classical sample of Soviet Genocide with the following stages: repressions against intelligentsia, liquidation of Ukrainian national church, subduing of the main layers of Ukrainian people – peasants who were violently hit by artificial famine. The last step was the dispersion of the Ukrainians by means of deportation and colonization of their lands by the representatives of other nations. Lemkin saw in communist actions a clear-cut consistent plan aimed at elimination of Ukrainian nation. Apparently this plan was not similar to final solution of Jewish problem by the Nazi and did not provide for Holocaust of all the Ukrainians. However, according to Rafael Lemkin the realization of this plan would have meant that Ukraine would perish just as if all the Ukrainians were killed because it would lose the part of the nation which preserved and developed its culture, belief, unifying ideas which paved the way for it and gave a soul to it i.e. made it not just population but a nation.
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In regard to the discussed issue of dealing with the communist regime in the former Czechoslovakia, particularly at the level of criminal law, it is impossible not to mention the Office for the Documentation and the Investigation of the Crimes of Communism. I worked in this office from the end of 1995 until August last year, and I had been the head of the investigations department since 2000. Please allow me to first briefly mention the history of this institution. The Office for the Documentation and the Investigation of the Crimes of Communism (hereinafter referred to as the ÚDV) was established thanks to the man who became its first director – the important (alas now deceased) dissident and philosopher PhDr. Václav Benda, who later became a senator. The office was established as of 1 January 1995 via the amalgamation of a police section with investigative powers, but only for the area covering the activity of the State Security (StB) service, which was incidentally defined in its name – the Office for the Documentation and the Investigation of the Activity of the StB and the Centre for the Documentation of the Illegality of the Communist Regime at the Ministry of Justice (originally the Coordination Centre for the Investigation of Violence against the Czech Nation in the Years 1945–1989 at the General Prosecutor’s Office).
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The trial is taking place at a district court in Warsaw of General Wojciech Jaruzelski (87) and the other members of a group named the Military Council of National Salvation, which on 13 December 1981 announced martial law in Poland, took power, and during the 15 months of its operation banned the Solidarity opposition movement. It was the final attempt to conserve communism in the so-called real Socialism phase, which lasted for another nine years. Before I present the case presented in the arraignment against General Jaruzelski and his colleagues, I must first describe those events and the backdrop against which the crimes which are today attributed to him were committed. Poles regard the beginning of the collapse of communism as the foundation of the independent trade union organisation Solidarity in the shipyards of Gdansk in August 1980. Soon afterwards almost 10 million people had joined up, both workers and members of the intelligentsia. Many members of Solidarity had previously been members of the Communist Party which the then constitution guaranteed the sole right to run the state. The activities of Solidarity consisted of supporting civil society, publishing a free press and previously banned books, and above all helping to overcome fear of absolute state power.
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The report traces the development of criminal law, after the establishment of the Bulgarian state in 681, and the question of how changes in state structure and falling Bulgarian state under Christian influence have an effect on the development of criminal law in medieval Bulgaria.
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Since ancient times and up to the present, the matter of securing an orderly, lawful, well-timed and flawless functioning of the system of public revenues and expenditures has been rather significant for the State. Its basis is rooted in the fiscal system. As a matter of fact, the fiscal system and its orderly, well-timed, complete and flawless realization has a great impact on existence, survival and even development of the State itself. Consequently, it is understandable how important and necessary for the State is to oppose, by applying a wide range of various measures, means and ways as well as procedures, at all levels, the various kinds and types of failing to pay, concealing, failing to report or avoiding the payment of taxes, contributions and other dues that make the system of public tributes, i.e. public revenues. Violating the regulations in the fiscal system area may entail various damaging consequences. Depending on the kind of violation and/or damage caused in terms of its scope and intensity, or putting in danger of protected social values, the law has provided different sanctions while distinguishing between criminal offences or certain other kinds of violation. The most dangerous and most serious forms of transgressing tax laws, apt to inflict most serious consequences, i.e. considerable damage to the society as a whole, make the category of tax criminal offences, or criminal offences in the area of taxes. Specific among these offences in terms of its significance, scope and characteristics is the act of tax embezzlement as the most serious form of expression of tax evasion threatened in criminal legislation by prescribed penalties and other criminal sanctions. Consequently, the present article is dedicated to elaboration of the criminal offence of tax embezzlement and description of efforts of the Republic of Serbia aimed at efficient suppression of various forms and types of that criminal offence.
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Misuse of narcotics is more and more our reality and its explicit tendency is increasingly destructive against the existing state of affairs. More precisely, negative consequences of use of narcotics as well as of crimes connected to them, and particularly the organized crime, are spreading around the globe assuming disastrous dimensions. In spite of the fact that international community has reacted to the situation with a determined strategy applying coordinated instruments in the struggle against the misuse of narcotics, the negative trend still continues. There is no doubt that states invest considerable efforts and enormous resources to put under control this negative social phenomenon. Approaches in that respect differ from country to country due to numerous and variable factors (economic, social, cultural…). The question is: repressive or liberal methods? Special attention in the present paper is paid to the explanation, i.e. monitoring and evaluation of appropriate modalities in preventing and suppressing that negative phenomenon. The optics used are, in a way, the September 2009 Law on amending the Criminal Law, and several more important concept innovations (or those implicitly based on a theoretical conception) as well as criticism of certain new incriminations specified in that Law.
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In Serbia there is no legal regulation concerning private security system. On the other hand there are many private organizations which deal with the private security. So, there are many problems in that field, including problems of conflict of interests. The author is talking about that in this article.
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American prison system is organizationally complex, with several jurisdictions and many penitentiary institutions. Divided jurisdiction between federal, state and local authorities from one side, and many kinds and types of prisons from another, make this prison system complicated and disunited. Thus there are inexplicable differences in conditions, standards and many other issues from state to state. American penologists look toward the future of state control of crime with much of anxiety. Enormous rise of a number of prisoners, an inefficacy of correction system and lack of really efficient corrective programs capable of correcting prisoners’ behavior strengthen a dark foreboding of the future in this field. The construction of prisons primarily for isolation of prisoners, not for ther behavior correction gets more and more frequent. At the end of 2006 there were 2.333.331 persons in prisons or jails in the USA or one-in-98 residents, presenting the biggest prison population rate in the world. From one year to another the number of prisoners rises by an average of 3.7 per cent. In recent years there has been noticed a tendency of increasing of number of prisoners in federal and state prisons while the numbers of prisoners in local prisons have been decreasing because of lack of resurces at the level of local community. As a reaction to permanent growth of prison population and more and more distinct danger to the safety of citizens, it has been developing the idea of super-maximum custody or ’supermax’. These prisons are described as “prisons of the future“ that should serve a purpose of harsher sentencing of those who are too violent, or for settling of those prisoners who must not be placed together with usual prison population.
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The main purpose of this paper is to elucidate the impact of judicial discretion in criminal justice during the 17th and 18th centuries, paying special attention to Canary Islands. This Atlantic archipelago was a territory belonging to Spanish Monarchy, and it was an enclave between Africa, Europe and America. For this reason, those islands were considered frontier areas in Early Modern Age and the Contemporary Age. This characteristic manifested itself social reality and daily life. Furthermore, the projection of those factors was notorious in criminal cases. The judicial records pertaining to sexual offences provided illustrative examples of the connection between social problems and certain types of crimes. During this historical era, the judges’ discretion served as a crucial tactic to mitigate the impact of unsystematized royal legislation, while also safeguarding medieval laws that remained in the 18th century. Simultaneously, the judges’ reasoning and the specific circumstances of each case, such as the ages of offender and victim, their social status, or the location of the crime, shaped the judicial decisions without any motivation. In this sense, discretion played a decisive role under the Castilian model of justice. The sources of this essay are the specialized literature, the Early Modern legal and doctrinal works, and the records belonging to the Historical Archive of the Province of Santa Cruz de Tenerife and the Historical Archive of the Canarian Museum.
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