Juridicalblog.net

The Rule of Law in my country strictly distinquishes between crimes and offences. Crimes are more dangerous than offences.
A crime is a term of Criminal Law. It’s investigated and judged along the Criminal Proceeding Code by police at first, than prosecutor sends a prosecution or punishment motion to the court, where a trial takes place. During criminal proceeding the perpetrator, if found guilty, is punished along the Penal Code, even may be sent to prison.
An offence is a term of Administrative Law. It’s investigated along the Police Code by the police too, but after that police handed it to the local authority, which proceeds action along the Administrative Proceeding Code and punishes offenders along the Offence Code. Neither prosecutor nor judge takes part in offence proceedings. The offender can’t be sent to prison during such proceeding, he or she is usually fined.
Here are 2 examples which show differences between a crime and an offence in my country:
1.
- who steals more than 5 000,- Czech crown, commits a crime
- who steals less then 5 000,- Czech crown, commits an offence,

2.
- who assaults and hurts another person, commits a crime if the treatmet of such injury lasts longer than 7 days,
- if the treatment lasts less than 7 days it’s not a crime, but an offence.

One day two young unemployed men, who were heavy smokers, used to visit pubs every day and who didn’t have enough money for their expenses, decided to assault a middle-aged woman, who worked as a shop assistant in a remote gas station on the outskirts of a regional town and to rob money from there.
In the late evening they parked their car nearby. One of them stayed minding in a car with running engine, the other man entered the station wearing a face mask, holding a gun in his hand and asked a woman, who was there alone, to give him all the money. He repeatedly threatened her that he would shot her if she wouldn’t give him money.
His gun was fake, but it looked like a real weapon. This woman was terrified and handed all the money from the cash register over to him.
The robber gave money into a plastic bag and returned to the car and both men immediately went away.
The police managed to capture them soon. Both men were accused of the robbery, which belonged among the most dangerous crimes in my country. Perpetrators may be sent to prison for 10 years, so they had to have a barrister during the whole proceeding. The investigation was run by the regional police and both men were taken into custody. They pleaded not guilty at first, but later the man who was in a gas station, confessed to the robbery and helped to convict the other man, who completely denied his accusation and declared, that he hadn’t taken part of the robbery at all.
After the investigation was over, the prosecutor sent both men in front of the court. The trial lasted nearly the whole day and at the end of it both men were found guilty and imprisoned. The man, who pleaded guilty was sent to prison for 4 years. His punishment was accepted both the man and the prosecutor. The other man, who didn’t plead guilty even in front of the court, was sentenced to 5 years’ imprisonment. His appeal was later rejected by the court of the 2nd instance.
I have to add, that there weren’t lots of evidence against them. Apart of confession of the first man, there was a gun, which was found in their car, clothes, which they were wearing during robbery and which they later threw into a litter bin and after the crime they started to pay a great amounts of money in a pub, which was unusual, surprising and striking as some witnesses told during trial. The weight of all these evidence was however strong enough for their conviction.
The punishment wasn’t too strict, because it was their first crime, they commited it at the age of 20 and the victim from a gas station wasn’t furtunately injured. I thing that the punishment of both robbers was adequate.
I’m curious what other people thing about their punishment. Was it strict or indulgent?

Along the Family Code, parents have to maintain their children during their childhood all the way to the time they’ll be able to make their living alone. This usually lasts till the age of 18, sometimes longer, sometimes the obligation to provide maintenance to their children finishes sooner.
Parents, who are divorced, usually live separately, so their children live with one of them and the other parent have to pay every month alimony, but there’re lots of parents, who don’t do that. They either pay alimony irregularly or don’t pay it at all. In many cases this caused shortage of money of a parent whom children are living with, which have to be compensated with the help of a local welfare institution, that pay financial aid instead of the alimony of the other parent. This aid is later enforced against a parent, who doesn’t pay alimony.
Along the Penal Code, parents, who don’t pay alimony at least 6 months, commit a crime called Neglect of maintenance duty. Everyone who commits such crime is threatened with a punishment from 6 months to 3 years. The Penal Code distinquishes between a person who doesn’t pay alimony and the one, who tries to dodge paying alimony. The second case is punished more strictly.
The crime like this, is very frequent in my country, so I regularly supervise investigation at least against 4 perpetrators every month, and so do all my colleagues.
The Penal Code concedes impunity to people accused of such crime, who pay outstanding alimony during criminal proceeding by the time the sentence is imposed by court, so a lot of accused do this and they are neither found guilty nor sentenced. Their case is stopped during a preparatory proceeding by prosecutor, if the owed alimony is payed still during investigation, or accused is absolved of the prosecution by court if the owed alimony is paid during trial.
But there’re lots of other parents who don’t pay alimony even during a criminal proceeding and are sencenced and punished by the court. Some parents are even repeatedly sent to prison.
A specific feature of this crime is that nearly everyone pleads guilty, but some of them defend and tell, that they didn’t have enough money to pay alimony. This defence is usually rebuted during investigation, only in a few cases is true, so it isn’t possible to convict such person.
In this contribution I’m not going to mention any case of a person, who doesn’t carry out his obligation to provide maintenance, because all the cases are quite similar. Maybe later I’ll mention some interesting or unusual case, if happen.

Along the School Act, children have to attend school and their parents have to send them there. The compulsory school attendance starts to children, who aren’t disqualified on the health grounds, at the age of 6 and lasts for 9 years.
Unfortunately, there’re still parents, who don’t care at their children’s school attendance, who aren’t interested in children’s school results and disregarded urgences from teachers to fulfil their duties. Such parents don’t mind, that their children stay at home instead of going to school regularly.
Children, who don’t go to school and stay at home, live so called the idling way of life.
Along the Criminal Code, parents, who enable, that their children live idling way of life, commit a crime called the Thread of education of youth. Such parents can be sent to prison for the period from 6 months to 5 years.
The last case like this, which I supervised, occured during the school year 2003-2004 in one of elementary schools. Three siblings aged 13, 12 and 9 years ceased attending school, so their teachers summoned their parents to visit the school, what they didn’t accepted. This teachers then visited parents in their flat and tried unsuccessfully to persuade them to sent children to school again, so after that they informed local social institution about the behaviour of children and their parents. Precautions imposed on them failed, because nothing was changed, so this institution announced the case to the police as a suspicion of a crime.
At first a policeman from a local police station questioned parents and they pleaded not guilty, so after an interviewing the teachers, the case was handed to the regional police, whose investigator accused both parents from a crime and after a short investigation prosecutor filed a prosecution to the regional court.
I took part in the trial, which lasted about 3 hours. Accused people pleaded not guilty even in front of the court, but the case was clear. The teachers’ testimony were convincing and the school documents, that were read during the trial, were also accepted as a convincing evidence.
Both parents were imposed conditional imprisonment for 18 months with probation for 3 years. They accepted punishment without hesitation and didn’t appeal against it.
It was clear, that they plead not quilty, because they were afraid of imprisonment without probation.
During the criminal proceedings it was also found out, that the whole family lived in a very poor living conditions in a flat, consisted of a kitchen and one room. The bahthroom and WC were outside the flat. They were disconnected by an electricity because they didn’t pay for its using. Both parents were unimployed, they didn’t have any education except of a remedial school. They didn’t have a chance to get a job, because they weren’t able to do any work, only simple activities, but their working moral wasn’t high. They didn’t try to get a job. They lived off welfare they regularly received from a local social authority.
I must add that simultaneously with this criminal proceedings, the civil action was held in order to take the children away from their parents and give them into educational institute, because their parents weren’t able and willing to educate them properly.

Before the Velvet revolution in 1989 and a few years after it, the standard of living in my country wasn’t very high. For example not every family had a car. Young people, especially men used to dream of driving, but they were mostly without a car, so some of them satisfied their desire for driving in an inappropriate way and used to steal cars to joyride.
Along the Penal Code, joyriding is a crime called Unauthorized usage of somebody else’s motor vehicle, so in that period I sent lots of joyriders to the court.
People, who steal a car in order to joyride, are mostly drunk, because they usually commit such crime during the night on their way home from a pub, but nevertheless they drive too fast, so they often cause a car accident.
In the late 90s. last century, the standard of living quickly improved, so even young people were able to buy at least a second-hand car.
This is probable the main reason, why the number of joyriders has fallen since, so such cases are rare nowadays.
The last case of joyriding, which investigation I supervised and which was slightly different, occured this summer. 18 years old student, without a driving licence, took, without any permission, keys of his parents’ car, opened the door, started the engine and set off for a joyride. In spite of the fact, that he can’t drive a car safely, he went very fast, so after a short ride he wasn’t able to go through a sharp left turn and got himself with a car out of the road, where he crashed into a tree next to the road and seriously damaged the car.
Fortunately for him, he was sober.
A policeman from a local police station started investigation of the accident in summarily preparatory proceedings, but the joyrider wasn’t accused, because his parents, as the owners of a damaged car, made use of their right and refused to give consent to the investigation against him, so it wasn’t possible to bring him to trial and the case had to be closed forever.