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Life imprisonment is any sentence of imprisonment for a crime under which convicted people are to remain in prison either for the rest of their natural lives or until pardoned, paroled or otherwise commuted to a fixed term. Crimes for which, in some countries, a person could receive this sentence include murder, attempted murder, conspiracy to commit murder, apostasy, terrorism, severe child abuse, rape, child rape, espionage, treason, high treason, drug dealing, drug trafficking, drug possession, human trafficking, severe cases of fraud, severe cases of financial crimes, aggravated criminal damage in English law, and aggravated cases of arson, kidnapping, burglary, or robbery which result in death or grievous bodily harm, piracy, aircraft hijacking, and in certain cases genocide, ethnic cleansing, crimes against humanity, certain war crimes or any three felonies in case of three-strikes law. Life imprisonment can also be imposed, in certain countries, for traffic offenses causing death. Life imprisonment is not used in all countries; Portugal was the first country to abolish life imprisonment, in 1884.
A pardon is a government decision to allow a person to be relieved of some or all of the legal consequences resulting from a criminal conviction. A pardon may be granted before or after conviction for the crime, depending on the laws of the jurisdiction.
The term sentence in law refers to punishment that was actually ordered or could be ordered by a trial court in a criminal procedure. A sentence forms the final explicit act of a judge-ruled process as well as the symbolic principal act connected to their function. The sentence can generally involve a decree of imprisonment, a fine, and/or punishments against a defendant convicted of a crime. Those imprisoned for multiple crimes usually serve a concurrent sentence in which the period of imprisonment equals the length of the longest sentence where the sentences are all served together at the same time, while others serve a consecutive sentence in which the period of imprisonment equals the sum of all the sentences served sequentially, or one after the other. Additional sentences include intermediate, which allows an inmate to be free for about 8 hours a day for work purposes; determinate, which is fixed on a number of days, months, or years; and indeterminate or bifurcated, which mandates the minimum period be served in an institutional setting such as a prison followed by street time period of parole, supervised release or probation until the total sentence is completed.
In Canada and England and Wales, certain convicted persons may be designated as dangerous offenders and subject to a longer, or indefinite, term of preventive detention in order to protect the public.
A habitual offender, repeat offender, or career criminal is a person convicted of a new crime who was previously convicted of crimes. Various state and jurisdictions may have laws targeting habitual offenders, and specifically providing for enhanced or exemplary punishments or other sanctions. They are designed to counter criminal recidivism by physical incapacitation via imprisonment.
Preventive detention is an imprisonment that is putatively justified for non-punitive purposes, most often to prevent (further) criminal acts. Preventive detention, the practice of incarcerating accused individuals before trial on the assumption that their release would not be in the best interest of society—specifically, that they would be likely to commit additional crimes if they were released.
Capital punishment in Denmark was abolished in 1930, with no death sentences having been carried out since 1892, but restored from 1945 to 1950 in order to execute Nazi collaborators. Capital punishment for most instances of war crimes was legally ended in 1978. The last execution was in June 1950.
Freedom of speech and freedom of the press in Denmark are ensured by § 77 of the constitution:
A day-fine, day fine, unit fine or structured fine is a unit of fine payment that, above a minimum fine, is based on the offender's daily personal income. A crime is punished with incarceration for a determined number of days, or with fines. As incarceration is a financial punishment, in the effect of preventing work, a day-fine represents one day incarcerated and without salary. It is argued to be just, because if both high-income and low-income population are punished with the same jail time, they should also be punished with a proportionally similar income loss. An analogy may be drawn with income tax, which is also proportional to the income, even progressively.
The Revised Penal Code contains the general penal laws of the Philippines. First enacted in 1930, it remains in effect today, despite several amendments thereto. It does not comprise a comprehensive compendium of all Philippine penal laws. The Revised Penal Code itself was enacted as Act No. 3815, and some Philippine criminal laws have been enacted outside of the Revised Penal Code as separate Republic Acts.
Life imprisonment in Canada is a criminal sentence for certain offences that has an indeterminate length and is the most severe punishment for any crime in the country. Criminal laws allowing for life imprisonment are enacted by the Parliament of Canada and apply uniformly across the country.
In Denmark, a life sentence is the most severe conviction under the Penal Code and reserved for the most serious crimes. The sentence is of indeterminate length. People receiving a life sentence in Denmark can request a pardoning hearing after 12 years. If the hearing is successful, the Justice Minister grants a pardon, subject to a parole period of up to 5 years.
In Italy, life imprisonment is the most severe punishment provided by law, and has an indeterminate length. Article 22 of the Italian Penal Code defines life imprisonment as "perpetual, and is taken for granted in one of the establishments destined for this, with the obligation of work and with night-time isolation", thus meaning that the sentence may last for the remainder of the convicted person's life. It is a mandatory punishment for aggravated cases of murder, aggravated cases of terrorism, felony murder in cases where serious violent offences result in death, using a weapon of mass destruction by causing an endemic through the spread of pathogenic germs in the case of a biological weapon, and mafia association under aggravated circumstances. It is also a possible punishment for terrorism, poisoning of water or food supplies, and treason.
In the United States, the law for murder varies by jurisdiction. In most US jurisdictions there is a hierarchy of acts, known collectively as homicide, of which first-degree murder and felony murder are the most serious, followed by second-degree murder and, in a few states, third-degree murder, followed by voluntary manslaughter and involuntary manslaughter which are not as serious, and ending finally in justifiable homicide, which is not a crime. However, because there are at least 52 relevant jurisdictions, each with its own criminal code, this is a considerable simplification.
The Code of Criminal Procedure commonly called Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC) is the main legislation on procedure for administration of substantive criminal law in India. It was enacted in 1973 and came into force on 1 April 1974. It provides the machinery for the investigation of crime, apprehension of suspected criminals, collection of evidence, determination of guilt or innocence of the accused person and the determination of punishment of the guilty. It also deals with public nuisance, prevention of offences and maintenance of wife, child and parents.
Kodeks Karny is Poland's criminal-law code. The name is often abbreviated KK.
Lèse majesté in Norway was judicially based and defined in Norway's 1902 Penal Code, which provided fines or prison for this crime. Often related to political conflicts, accusations of lèse majesté were frequent in the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries, and many cases resulted in execution. Virtually no legal actions have been taken after 1905. The last to be charged for lèse majesté was a man who attacked Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom with a tomato during her state visit in 1981. As of 2015, lèse majesté is no longer a criminal offence in Norway.
The Uniform Determinate Sentencing Act of 1976 was a bill signed into law by Governor Jerry Brown to changes sentencing requirements in the California Penal Code. The act converted most sentences from an "indeterminate" sentence length at the discretion of the parole board to a "determinate" sentence length specified by the state legislature. The act was one of the largest drivers in a 9x increase in California's prison population in the two decades after the act passed.
Hate speech in Denmark is outlawed by § 266b of the penal code, colloquially called the racism paragraph (racismeparagraffen), which outlaws threats, mockery and degradation against groups defined by race, skin colour, nationality, ethnicity, religion or sexual orientation. The law was originally introduced in 1939, prompted by the antisemitism of 1930s Germany, which had spread to Denmark.
References
- ↑ "Danish Security and Intelligence Service: Danish Penal Code - Chapters 12 and 13". Archived from the original on 19 July 2011.
- 1 2 Retsinformation.dk:Straffeloven.
- ↑ Vestergaard, Jørn (2018). "De strafbare forhold og strafferettens kilder" [The punishable acts and the sources of the criminal law]. In Vestergaard, Jørn (ed.). Forbrydelser og andre strafbare forhold (3rd ed.). København: Gjellerup. ISBN 978-87-13-05083-3. OCLC 1047702689.
De mest alvorlige og mange af de mest velkendte lovovertrædelser er kriminaliseret i straffeloven af 1930[.]
[The most serious and most of the most well-known crimes are criminalized in the Penal Code of 1930[.]] - 1 2 3 Vestergaard 2018, p. 2.
- 1 2 Vestergaard 2018, p. 1.