Inmate clemency criteria changes

The changes to inmate clemency mean a confession is not necessary to pardon a prisoner the State Commission for Parole announced.

Amendments to the laws were announced by the Commission's chairman Alexandre Elisashvili at a briefing yesterday.

Existing regulations mean convicts sentenced to life imprisonment should carry a term of 25 years before they are eligible to apply for a state pardon. According to the changes, this term will be reduced to 15 years.

The previous rules meant if a prisoner pleaded not guilty, the Commission would not consider his case. The amendments would see this provision cancelled.

Furthermore, amendments were also made in relation to juvenile cases. In the instance when an offender who was a juvenile at the time of an offence but was an adult when sentenced, the Commission would consider the offender as a minor.

In addition, according to the old standards, if pardoned convicts were to remove the offence of conviction and were again arrested, the Commission would not consider their case.

Under the new regulations, the Commission will discuss such cases, however, these prisoners should fulfil two thirds of their sentence and then [we will] discuss their cases,Elisashvili said.

Within the new law, a "special rule for pardon” remained however these instances would be "really special”, Elisashvili said.

Changes made to this part of the document meant meetings to discuss special cases shall be attended by two thirds of the Commission members and 100 percent of participants must agree on important aspects of the case.

Currently, if the Commission refused to pardon a convict, he could reapply to the Commission three months later. Now, this term has increased to six months.

In the near future, the Pardon Commission website will be updated and launched.

Through the website, it will be possible to be interactive [where] interested persons can ask questions and an administrators will answer, Elisashvili said.

On the website will be a calculator where they can enter their own data and information about their prison sentence and they will automatically receive and answer stating whether they are able or not to ask for a pardon, Elisashvili said.

Cases entered in January and February of this year will discuss according to the changed inmate clemency criteria.