The Ministry of Justice is preparing major changes to the penal code, as the draft law amending the law – the Criminal Code and other laws, including those providing for stricter penalties for certain offences, as well as deleting the penalty from the penal code 25 years of imprisonment, after which the gap will extend the maximum term of imprisonment from previous years 15 years 30 years, as well as a number of other changes that will affect matters.
On 16 September 2021 on the website of the government legislative centre was made available Draft law amending the law – Criminal Code and some other laws, which basically duplicates the proposed amendments of June 2019, which was sent by the President to the Constitutional Court, which then confirmed the unconstitutionality of proceeding on the draft amendment of the Criminal Code and other laws (Constitutional Court judgment of 14 July 2020 Kp 1/19).
The bill prepared by the Ministry of Justice is extensive and contains a number of proposed changes in both the general part and the special and military penal code.
The most attentive change is to eliminate penalties (Article 32 (k) penalties 25 years of imprisonment, a separate type of punishment and an extension of the term of imprisonment to 30 years. As a justification for the elimination of the penalty 25 years of imprisonment as a separate penalty are to be argued by the fact that, as a generic punishment, it was relatively rarely ruled by the court, and its specific dimension seemed to limit the judicial freedom to rule on punishment.
A controversial regulation may also be considered to be the ordering decision of the vehicle's forfeiture or equivalent in the cases specified in the Act (designed Article 44b (k.k.), it is not enough to conclude that the severity of the penalty will be closely correlated with the value of the car.
Big emotions also awaken a planned change Article 60(3)) k.k. – concerning the institution of the so-called "small crown witness", in accordance with the proposed regulation, the criminal court will apply this institution – consisting of an extraordinary relaxation of the penalty and even suspension of its execution, only at the request of the prosecutor. Furthermore, the prosecutor's request in this respect will be binding on the criminal court.
Finally, it is also worth pointing out the changes in the judicial directives on penalties. The legislator resigned from the used in Article 53(1)) k.k. a phrase in the form of "needs to shape public legal awareness" for the return of "social impact of punishment". This is due to the legislator's conviction that the penalty is primarily intended to deter other potential perpetrators of crime, while the legal awareness of the public seems to be in the light of the intention of the designer to be irrelevant.
The above-mentioned amendments to the penal code are merely a section of the proposed amendment, which, if it occurs, will be beyond doubt of a significant nature.