Juridicalblog.net

In my country court may only impose punishments, which are mentioned in the Penal Code.
Among the most frequent punishments belong imprisonment, imprisonment with conditionally granted a stay of execution, pecuniary punishment, compelled community service and prohibition of professional activity.
Less frequent punishments are – deprivation of titles of honours and awards, deprivation of military rank, forfeiture of a thing, forfeiture of property, banishment, and prohibition of abode.
There’s also an exceptional punishments – imprisonment for the term between 15 and 25 years and the life penalty.
The death penalty was abolished after the velvet revolution in 1989.
As you can see the Penal Code doesn’t allow to impose an unusual kind of punishment – shaming, so I don’t know exactly what it is.
I’d say shaming is something like a pillory in middle ages. It was a special device placed in public, which clamped hands and legs of perpetrator, who wasn’t able to move. Everyone from the crowd, surrounded the perpetrator knew what crime the perpetrator commited. People used to throw stones, carcasses or excrements at perpetrator so such person was often injured, sometimes happened that perpetrator during pillory died.
I don’t think pillory could be used nowadays.
Shaming reminds me an event from my childhood, that I still remember and that happened in the block of flats, where I lived with my parents. On the ground floor of the building there was a supermarket. A young female shoplifter used to come into the supermarket and used to steal goods from there. She was repeatedly caught by the staff. Management of the supermarket didn’t call police and in the end decided to use so called self-help. It made a photo of that woman and displayed it in the shopwindow, so everyone, who entered the supermarket could see, that this woman, who lived in the same street was a shoplifter. It was really effective. She stopped stealing. It was a shaming imposed by supermarket.
I don’t know another example like this.
I think, if impose by the court, shaming like this would be a convenient and indeed effective punishment.
I also thing that threat of that kind of shaming, would keep shoplifters from stealing.
Shaming, imposed by court on the base of the Penal Code, would also be an effective threat against those, who commit many other misdemeanours and crimes, so shaming should be put among punishments in the Penal Code and the Offensive Code.

It isn’t possible to drive a car being intoxicated, so police often inspects traffic to discover drunken drivers.

This case started during such monitoring. Police stopped a driver and he refused to undergo both a breathing and a blood test. Refusing them, he commited an offence.

According to the Offence Act, everyone, who drives a car, has to undergo such test being asked about it by police during a traffic monitoring.

Police sent this offence to the local authority as a driving offence. The offence proceedings followed and the man was fined 15 000 crown and he also wasn’t allowed to drive cars for 6 months. This decision came into force.

Neither public prosecutor nor judge participate in the proceedings like this.

During this 6 months’ driving ban he was stopped by police, driving a car again, so now he didn’t commit an offence, but a crime Wasting of execution of official decision, according to the Criminal Code. The police started summary preparatory proceedings that took 3 days and after that the public prosecutor filled a punish motion against this driver to the court. His criminal record was clear, so the judge imposed a criminal order without trial and condemned him to 200 hours or community servis and 2 years of prohibition of driving cars. The driver accepted this punishment.

During this 2 years’ period the man didn’t respect his punishemnt and drove a car again and was caught by police, so he committed another crime wasting of execution of official decision. He was detained by police with the permission of a public prosecutor and during 48 hours another summary preparatory proceedings against him was finished. The public prosecutor sent him to the court with a punish motion. The summary trial started immediately and the judge sentenced him to jail for 4 months (maximum possible penalty in the case like this was 6 months) and imposed him prohibition of driving cars for 3 years too.

The man was very surprised and served a notice of appeal, but wasn’t successful.

Soon after his releasing from prison he repeated his crime again, so after another summary criminal proceedings he returned to jail for 6 months.

This event happened one afternoon in a small willage, where people knew each other. An older man with his wife visited a local pub. They were sitting at the table with another man, drinking beer together.
This woman started conversation with the man, which wasn’t pleasant to her husband, so he tried to interrupt them, but he was failed, so he grabbed the man, shook with him and hit him two times in his face, broke his nose and knocked out two of his front teeth.
The waiter called both ambulance and police. Injured man was taken to hospital and the next day was released home, where his curing continued for 21 days.
A policeman from a local police station questioned immediately visitors of the pub, the waiter, the perpetrator and his wife. She made use of her right and refused to give evidence against her husband. The suspicious man confessed, that he had assaulted and injured a man. In the meantime the policeman received a message from hospital, saying that the treatment of injured man would last more than 1 week.
After that the policeman referred the case with all the documents to the investigator from the regional police and offered to accuse the perpetrator. On the base of documents the investigator accepted the offer and accused him of assaulting and disorderly conduct and questioned him as accused. The accused man repeatedly confessed the crime and asked for conditional stop of his criminal prosecution.
The investigator provided a criminal record of the accused man and found, that this event was the first criminal case in man’s life.
During investigation the accused man settled the damage up towards the health insurance company, which occured during treatment of injured man, who himself didn’t ask any compensation.
The investigator referred then the case with all the documents to the public prosecutor, who, on the base of documents, passed a resolution and conditionally stopped the criminal prosecution of the man and set a trial for 1 year.
This resolution was accepted by accused man, injured man and the health insurance company.
During 1 year’s trial the behavior of the man was without any defect, so after that the public prosecutor decided that the accused man acquited himself. This decision was also accepted and the case was over.
This case was quite simple and not too dangerous, the accused man has lived properly before, so it wasn’t necessary to refer his case to the court.
The penal code in my country had a clause, which enables conditional stopping of criminal prosecution in cases like this, so I applied it.