Data on Escape Cases Due to Changes in Preventive Measures

management, criminal rehabilitation, upgrading the prison system, innovating and improving the quality of detention and rehabilitation.

Thus, prison escapes mainly occur due to loopholes in the guarding and protection of prisons and cells; in the management of prisoners going to work or going to hospitals, in which cases of breaking into prison cells and escaping while working account for a significant proportion; Detention conditions do not ensure safety. Notably, some prisons, due to overemphasizing production tasks, have sent prisoners to work indiscriminately when the prisoners' ideology and attitude towards reform are not yet firmly established.

It should also be noted that the number of wanted subjects who escaped in other cases such as: Evading execution of sentence; escaping while being escorted, escaping during the period of suspension of execution of sentence, escaping while on bail awaiting trial... also occurred. In which, the main phenomenon is the crime of escaping execution of prison sentence, escaping arrest warrant of the People's Procuracy, People's Court or escaping due to incorrect application of BPNC on the nature of the subject, escaping due to delay in issuing decisions on criminal procedure (arrest, search).

Second, the Criminal Procedure Code stipulates that after arresting a wanted person, they must be immediately taken to the nearest police agency, prosecutor's office or People's Committee.

However, in practice, the qualifications and capacity of the staff at the grassroots level are still limited, which has had a significant impact on the implementation of activities to receive wanted persons such as making records of arrests according to the provisions of Article 84 of the Criminal Procedure Code, causing difficulties for the following agencies in the process of receiving wanted persons. Or there is a phenomenon of pushing and avoiding in receiving wanted persons between investigation agencies; The departments, branches, unions and mass forces have not been mobilized to participate in the work of detecting, arresting and mobilizing wanted subjects to surrender...

Third, the arrest of a wanted person was not in accordance with proper procedures and without authority.

After arrest, the rate of surrender of wanted persons, including suspension of investigation, accounts for 2.17% [8]. Although, compared with other handling results,

This number is not high, but the suspension of investigation needs to be limited to the lowest level. The reason for this situation is that some units issue wrongful, incorrect decisions, decisions on the wrong person, the wrong crime, decisions on the wrong person based on statements, without basis, not following the correct procedure, leading to the situation that when arresting the subject, investigating and clarifying, there are no signs of crime, cannot handle or there is not enough basis to handle, must issue a decision to suspend the investigation.

Fourth, the participation of the masses in arresting wanted persons is still limited.

Although with the spirit of the entire people participating in maintaining and protecting social security and order, preventing crime, however, through the analysis of 39,286 wanted subjects who were arrested, mobilized to surrender and eliminated wanted subjects, it shows that the results of the people's activities in capturing wanted subjects are still too low (accounting for 0.90%) [8]. This depends on two main factors: Wanted people have many sophisticated and dangerous methods of hiding and coping, so it is difficult for the people to detect and capture them. On the other hand, the work of initiating, guiding and organizing the people to voluntarily and actively participate in the work of capturing criminals has not been carried out effectively. The phenomenon of a part of the people being indifferent, fearful, avoiding, even afraid of criminals or covering up and harboring; not actively supporting the investigation agency in capturing criminals still occurs...

Fifth, the application of criminal policies towards wanted persons who surrender is still inconsistent.

Among the measures applied by the Investigation Agency to arrest fugitive criminals, there is a measure to persuade them to surrender. However, the application of criminal policies to wanted persons who surrender is not consistent. In some cases, wanted persons who surrender are entitled to mitigating circumstances, while in other cases, they are not.

In the past, when handling a criminal case with signs of a criminal confessing and surrendering, the Courts understood and applied this circumstance very differently, not only for the Judges of the District Court, Provincial Court, the Supreme People's Court of Appeal, but also for the Board of Review. This shows that the circumstance of a criminal confessing and surrendering has a very important meaning for the agencies conducting the proceedings to apply in prosecuting criminal liability as well as when deciding on punishment.

Regarding the circumstance of the offender confessing, after the 1985 Penal Code came into legal effect, on June 2, 1990, the joint sector of the Ministry of Interior, the Supreme People's Procuracy, the Supreme People's Court, and the Ministry of Justice issued Circular No. 05/TTLN providing relatively complete and detailed guidance on determining and applying this circumstance when resolving a criminal case with signs of the offender confessing. However, in the process of applying this Circular when deciding on penalties for criminals, especially after the 1999 Penal Code came into legal effect, the Court found that if all cases of criminals confessing and surrendering were applied to Clause 1, Article 46 of the Penal Code, it would be unsatisfactory, so on June 10, 2002, the Chief Justice of the Supreme People's Court issued Official Letter No. 81/2001/TANDTC instructing the Courts to only apply Clause 1, Article 46 of the Penal Code to the circumstance of criminals confessing, and the circumstance of criminals surrendering is only applied to Clause 2, Article 46 of the Penal Code. After the above Official Letter was issued, the Investigation Agency and the Procuracy did not have any comments, but the different opinions came from the Judges of the Court. The majority of Judges considered Official Letter No. 81 as an official document of the Supreme People's Court providing guidance, so there was no reason not to apply it. However, some judges want to apply point o, clause 1, Article 46 of the Penal Code so that if the offender has another mitigating circumstance as prescribed in clause 1, Article 46 of the Penal Code, Article 47 of the Penal Code will be applied to impose a penalty below the lowest level of the penalty range or to change to a lighter penalty, so they believe that Official Dispatch No. 81 is not yet a legal document and therefore does not require judges to comply, while Circular No. 05 has a higher legal value and has not been replaced; therefore, in the case of a criminal surrendering,

Applying Point o, Clause 1, Article 46 of the Penal Code. This is not a big issue, but in some cases, there are differences between the Court of First Instance and the Court of Appeal in determining and applying the circumstances stipulated in Point o, Clause 1, Article 46 of the Penal Code, which fundamentally changes the decision on the offender, such as: The Court of First Instance sentenced the defendant to imprisonment because it determined that the defendant only surrendered, but the Court of Appeal determined that the defendant confessed, so the defendant was given a suspended sentence or a significant reduction in the sentence for the defendant; after the appeal trial, the Court of First Instance disagreed and recommended a review of the appeal judgment... [26]. The content of the official dispatch on the policy for wanted subjects is not specific and clear, so it has not been effective in calling on wanted subjects to surrender.

Sixth, the information on the QDTN does not yet meet the requirements for detecting and arresting wanted persons.

Although the Criminal Procedure Code stipulates very specifically the content of the wanted notice, however, through the practice of wanted notices, it shows that the lack of necessary information as prescribed in the wanted notices and wanted notices of competent authorities continues to occur. Analyzing 39,730 subjects with wanted notices in the 5 years 2004-2009, the wanted notices lacking information accounted for 49.14%, of which 7,831/39,730 subjects lacked photos or had photos but were unclear (accounting for 19.71%), 6,118/39,730 subjects lacked identification features (accounting for 15.39%), 981/39,730 subjects lacked family history (accounting for 2.46%), 4,593/39,730 subjects lacked relationships (accounting for 11.58%). Thus, the number of Decisions (warrants) for wanted persons with full information as prescribed by the 2003 Criminal Procedure Code is 20,207 subjects (accounting for 50.86%) [8]. With this rate, it will be very difficult for the masses and specialized forces to participate in detecting and arresting wanted persons. This not only makes the wanted work less effective but also directly causes the number of wanted subjects to increase and become more stagnant.

If compared with the quality of the QDTN that the Vietnam Interpol Office received from the international Interpol in recent years, it shows that nearly 100%

The notices all contain very detailed information such as: personal characteristics, photo, fingerprints, full name, gender, date and place of birth, parents' names, nationality, identification documents, special identifying characteristics, occupation of the subject, languages ​​the subject can use; summary information about the case, accomplices, crime, law provisions on crime, maximum sentence that can be applied, investigation, prosecution, trial period or duration of arrest warrant, arrest warrant number (date of issue, place of issue), decision or verdict number (date of issue, place of issue), procedures to be carried out when discovering the subject...[22].

Seventh, the investigation agency has not done a good job of verifying and investigating thoroughly before issuing a verdict.

QDTN


The Law on Civil Procedure has prescribed that the right to a civil judgment be granted to the following subjects:

- Accurately identified the crime or sentence, full name, age,

Personal history, identification characteristics, relationships of the subject and attached photo (if any), name plate, and address of the subject.

- Measures have been taken to verify and arrest but without results [5].

However, in reality, there are cases where the subject has not yet reached the level of needing to issue a warrant but still issues a warrant. Some subjects are issued a warrant until they are arrested after only 1-2 days or after the decision to approve the decision to prosecute the accused, the Investigation Agency issues a warrant without taking any measures to temporarily detain them. There are many cases where a warrant is issued, when the investigation period expires, a decision is made to temporarily suspend the investigation to close the file without extending the investigation period to organize the arrest of the wanted subject. In some investigation departments, because they want to complete the file or want to quickly arrest the subject to quickly end the case, there are cases where the warrant is not yet at the level of needing to be issued but the warrant is still issued. There are still cases where investigators want to issue a warrant to arrest and meet the arrest target for the unit.

Eighth, the application of BPNC for bail by the investigation agency, prosecution, and trial is not strict, timely, and not on the right subjects.

During the process of conducting procedural activities, the investigation, prosecution and trial agencies did not apply the BPNC for bail closely, promptly and to the wrong subjects, so the subjects took advantage of the situation to escape and had to be wanted (accounting for 12.16%), causing difficulties for the investigation, trial and execution of sentences.

Table 2.5: Data on escape cases due to changes in preventive measures


BPNC Change Agency

Number of objects

Percentage

Investigation agency

1,835

38%

Procuracy

724

15%

Court

2,271

47%

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Data on Escape Cases Due to Changes in Preventive Measures

Source: [8].


Analysis of the data in the table above shows that, among the three agencies, the Investigation Agency, the Procuracy and the Court, the Court's change of the penalty mechanism to allow criminals to escape is the most (accounting for 47%), followed by the Investigation Agency and the Procuracy. Therefore, during implementation, these agencies need to further strengthen their sense of responsibility and working capacity to avoid cases where criminals take advantage of the situation to escape.

Nine, the coordination relationship between the Investigation Agency and the Court

Although the Joint Circular No. 03/TTLN dated January 7, 1995 provides relatively specific guidance on the issue of wanted suspects and defendants during the prosecution and trial stages. However, in reality, the issue of implementing the Court's request to search for suspects and defendants still has many shortcomings. In some cases, it has not been implemented in a timely manner. This is shown in the fact that after receiving the Court's request to search for defendants, the Investigation Agency did not comply with Regulation No. 107/C11-C27 dated January 12, 1993 of the General Department of the People's Police on responsibilities.

The responsibility of the police forces and levels in building and exploiting information to serve the criminal investigation results in the issuance of arrest warrants too late.

Also according to the above Circular, after the expiration of one month from the date of the Court's official dispatch requesting the arrest, if the search has not resulted in any results, the Investigation Agency that issued the arrest warrant must notify the Court so that the Court can issue a decision to bring the case to trial in absentia of the defendant as prescribed. However, in reality, there are many cases where the above deadline has expired and the Investigation Agency has not notified the Court. As a result, the case has been prolonged, leading to many cases exceeding the statutory time limit. This demonstrates that there has not been close coordination between the agencies conducting the proceedings in the search for suspects and defendants. The Court and the Procuracy have not urged or reminded the Investigation Agency to monitor the search for suspects and defendants in accordance with the provisions of law.

Tenth, international cooperation on wanted persons

Besides the achieved results, the international wanted work is still facing difficulties and problems:

- Through the practice of coordination in the pursuit and transfer of international criminals, it has been shown that the verification and investigation of subjects through criminal judicial assistance activities is difficult, incomplete and does not ensure the time limit as prescribed by law, especially in the application of regulations on detention and handling of foreign criminals. Due to the limited provision of information, the determination of criminal records, previous criminal records, characteristics of subjects in Vietnam and their activities in Vietnam after their return must be very elaborate, meticulous and timely because subjects move quickly, use fake passports, change their names and surnames to escape from one country to another to continue committing crimes.

- Currently, there is no bilateral cooperation mechanism with other countries on the capture of wanted criminals, while information exchange activities between countries

The work of arresting wanted subjects is still very limited. The arrest of wanted subjects right at the border gate according to the provisions of law has not been implemented yet because the regulations on the professional activities of the Ministry of Public Security for subjects banned from leaving the country, banned from entering the country, cautioned about leaving the country... must be approved by the Ministry's leaders. On the other hand, the arrest and temporary detention of wanted subjects who are foreigners because we do not decide to prosecute the accused, the Police force can only temporarily detain for a maximum of 09 days according to the provisions of the Criminal Procedure Code and hand them over to foreign law enforcement agencies (the Procuracy cannot approve the temporary detention order), so it is very difficult to verify and handle the subjects.

- In terms of legal mechanisms both domestically and internationally. Domestically, the wanted activities have only stopped at written requests without clear regulations, and for foreign countries, the number of mutual legal assistance agreements with countries that we have signed is not much. Coordination in investigating and arresting fugitives related to foreign countries is still limited due to differences in the laws of each country and there are no specific coordination regulations. The funding source for international wanted services is very limited, the level of staff has not met the requirements. This is an issue that is being raised and requires more attention, especially legal issues, and staff must at the same time strengthen measures to proactively prevent the situation of fleeing abroad and vice versa.

2.3.2. Causes of the above-mentioned shortcomings and limitations


2.3.2.1. Causes due to the subjective consciousness of the subject applying measures to prevent and arrest wanted persons

- Subjectively, due to the low awareness of wanted work in some places and at some times; not really paying attention to directing and closely inspecting to promptly detect and correct shortcomings and deficiencies in wanted work; the coordination mechanism between forces is not tight; professional activities and organization

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