The Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine has passed the bill No 5534 on introducing amendments to the Criminal Code of Ukraine (regarding the rules for calculating punishments and accounting the term of pre-trial detention) in the first reading and as a whole. This decision was supported by 227 people's deputies, - 112.ua reports.
"Pre-trial detention shall be included by the court in the term of punishment in the case of conviction to the deprivation of liberty day for a day or by the rules provided in part one of the present Article. When imposing punishments which are not specified in part one of the present Article, the court, taking into account the pre-trial detention, may mitigate the punishment or completely release the convict from his serving", - the bill says.
The deputies supported the document taking into account the amendment voiced in the session hall by the head of the committee on legislative support of law enforcement activities Andriy Kozhemiakin.
As previously reported, on November 26, 2015, the Rada adopted the law "On Amendments to the Criminal Code of Ukraine on improvement of the procedure of considering pre-trial detention as a detention sentence", better known as the "Savchenko law". According to this law, in the case of custodial sentence, the court considers the term of pre-trial detention as the term for serving punishment at the rate of "one day of pre-trial detention for two days of imprisonment". The Criminal Code had provided earlier that the term spent in remand prison shall be included in the term of imprisonment at the "day for a day" rate.
"Savchenko law" is repeatedly being criticized by the law enforcement agencies, because, according to the security officials, many of the prisoners released on the basis of this legislative act had again turned to crime.