Ministry Amends Penal Code to Introduce Life Imprisonment
The Justice Ministry presented and opened for public debate on Friday changes to the penal code which introduce life imprisonment for criminal acts of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. The code is drafted in a bid to bring Slovenian legislation in line with the Roma Statute of the International Criminal Court.
According to Justice Minister Lovro Sturm, who presented the changes to the press today, life imprisonment would also threaten those convicted of repeated first-degree murders, which are under the current penal code facing up to 30 years of imprisonment - the longest prison sentence at the moment.
Life imprisonment could be considered only in the case of extreme severity of a criminal act and personal circumstances of the offender, said Sturm. If Slovenia does not bring its penal code in line with the International Criminal Court, it could not execute life imprisonment sentences ruled out by the court. Changes to the penal code also envisage a possibility of setting up a special record of sexual offenders against minors. "It envisages providing data on the erased sentences for paedophiles to education institutes and associations for children and minors," said the minister. The chapter on criminal offenses against life and body meanwhile defines two manners of homicide - murder and manslaughter - the latter being a homicide without aggravating circumstances, and the former being a more severe manner of murder.
Changes to the penal code also envisage a ban on cloning and define mobbing as criminal offence, said Sturm. Under the code, offenders are facing up to three years in prison. Also facing up to three years in prison would be employers who force female employees to agree that they will not get pregnant.
The new penal code also brings changes to limitations, said Sturm. It preserves the division between limitations of criminal prosecution and limitations of the execution of criminal penalty, and abandons the division between relative and absolute limitations, said the minister.
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