| Popis: |
The article contains legal and criminological research of significance of probation report in hearing criminal cases and obstacles to use it. It is found that especially rare use of probation report is incompatible with importance of such report according to constitutional principles of justice and rule of law, provisions of criminal law which suppose the need to individualize criminal liability. Legal acts regulating use of probation report are quite comprehensive, but contain certain shortcomings which may be deemed obstacles for broader application of such reports in practice. It concerns definition of the purpose of the report and omission to specifically regulate when it must be used. The trial court should invoke probation report whenever there is doubt whether in case of guilty verdict real punishment of imprisonment should be imposed or probation should be used instead of it, and in the latter case if there any doubts exists on what probation measures should be applied. In practice, probation reports have been developed for people accused only with premeditated different dangerous crimes that violate various values stored by the Criminal Code, and for the persons who committed several crimes. In most cases the accused persons were under the influence of alcohol at the time of the offence, as well as the influence of the accomplices on the accused is observed in the majority of cases. For the purposes of the probation report, it was intended to personalize the probation conditions for people of all ages. Education of the accused persons had often been poor, but often the study has been continued. All the accused persons were convicted previously, their propensity to commit crimes encouraged the court to explore the possibility of adjustment of criminal conduct by the individualization of the sentence. The crime risk of the accused person ranged from low to medium. The probation officers welcome possibility of using of the probation reports and the accused persons agreed to cooperate with officials preparing the reports. Probation reports terms depend mostly on the accused person`s willingness to cooperate and officials have a small workload for probation reports preparation. The officers, who prepare reports, identify the need of application of deeper psychological knowledge and training on the OASys (the Offender Assessment System) methodology. Judges, who have issued instructions to develop the probation reports, welcome the possibility of using of the probation report, support in the individualization of the sentence or in selecting of other sanction and legislation, regulating the use of these reports, does not get a lot of attention. The judges probably assigned to draw reports due to the difficulties faced by the accused persons and to proper decision on sanctions for the accused young age persons. Judges may overestimate the charge of probation officers and therefore rarely assign the probation reports. The aforementioned conclusions of the article are drawn by analyzing legal acts and jurisprudence of the Constitutional Court and the Supreme Court of Lithuania, recommendations of Council of Europe, legal and criminological literature, materials of criminal cases, interviews of judges and probation officers. |
