NewsWhore
09-28-2010, 03:00 PM
Writing in Listin Diario on Monday, lawyer Vinicio Castillo Seman comments on an investigative report in El Caribe referring to more than 3,000 murder cases that have occurred over the past three years.
According to the report, the culprit has only been penalized in 5% of all cases. Castillo observes that 95% of these criminals are walking free on Dominican streets without any penalty. He describes this as "hair-raising" and attributes it to a collapse in social discipline following the imposition of a new penal procedures code in the DR.
Castillo says this was imposed on the country by the USAID and the US Embassy in 2004 and features rules estranged from the origins of Dominican law and Dominican culture itself.
"Public security has deteriorated to alarming levels with the most amazing and reproachable indifference from the so-called actors of the system who today, despite the overwhelming bloodbath still resist modifying the Penal Procedures Code and the Minor Code," he writes. He says these two have proven to be true allies of crime.
"The surviving victims of violence, assaults, robbery and other crimes do not have the minimum encouragement to press charges against their assailants because they know that the penal procedures code protects them and they will walk free in short time," he writes. He explains that in contrast with the previous criminal procedures code in which the government prosecutors would condemn the offender, today the victim has to bear all the process while the government prosecutors take a passive attitude. He says that as a result, there is no prosecution in 90% of cases.
Castillo says that what is most irritating about all this is that the same legislators who blocked the bill to modify the penal procedures code that was presented by then senator for Santo Domingo Jose Tomas Perez are the same ones who now are complaining in the media about the increase in impunity. He also criticized the prosecutor general who bowed to accepting the imposition of the new procedure penal code by a foreign power.
He also criticized all the public pressure that is put on the police when the "rights" of criminals are violated.
He concludes that the combination of the structural failures of the judicial branch, the penal procedure code and the demoralization of the police have left Dominican society at the mercy of the violent.
More... (http://www.dr1.com/index.html#10)
According to the report, the culprit has only been penalized in 5% of all cases. Castillo observes that 95% of these criminals are walking free on Dominican streets without any penalty. He describes this as "hair-raising" and attributes it to a collapse in social discipline following the imposition of a new penal procedures code in the DR.
Castillo says this was imposed on the country by the USAID and the US Embassy in 2004 and features rules estranged from the origins of Dominican law and Dominican culture itself.
"Public security has deteriorated to alarming levels with the most amazing and reproachable indifference from the so-called actors of the system who today, despite the overwhelming bloodbath still resist modifying the Penal Procedures Code and the Minor Code," he writes. He says these two have proven to be true allies of crime.
"The surviving victims of violence, assaults, robbery and other crimes do not have the minimum encouragement to press charges against their assailants because they know that the penal procedures code protects them and they will walk free in short time," he writes. He explains that in contrast with the previous criminal procedures code in which the government prosecutors would condemn the offender, today the victim has to bear all the process while the government prosecutors take a passive attitude. He says that as a result, there is no prosecution in 90% of cases.
Castillo says that what is most irritating about all this is that the same legislators who blocked the bill to modify the penal procedures code that was presented by then senator for Santo Domingo Jose Tomas Perez are the same ones who now are complaining in the media about the increase in impunity. He also criticized the prosecutor general who bowed to accepting the imposition of the new procedure penal code by a foreign power.
He also criticized all the public pressure that is put on the police when the "rights" of criminals are violated.
He concludes that the combination of the structural failures of the judicial branch, the penal procedure code and the demoralization of the police have left Dominican society at the mercy of the violent.
More... (http://www.dr1.com/index.html#10)