Community Service an Alternative Punishment for Female Criminals

The Georgian Professional Psychologists Association (GPPA) with the support of the Foundation of the Open Society Institute (FOSI) has conducted the project ‘Community Service – Alternative Punishment for Women,’ which aims to provide non-custodial punishment- community service – for certain categories of women through the presentation of a legislative initiative, mobilization of public opinion and eradication of defects in legal practice.

Community service, one of the forms of alternative punishment, is considered by the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe to be a corrective and positive sanction. This form is used in Europe and the USA as a main and independent, as well as alternative kind of punishment.

According to Part 4, Article 44 of the Criminal Code of Georgia, pregnant women and women having children of less than 7 years of age, disabled of the I and II group, and pensioners, do not at present have any possibility to undergo punishment by community service. This group also unites women who gave birth to their children in prison. This restriction, derived from legal practice of the Soviet period, has to date remained unchanged in the Criminal Code of Georgia, as well as in the republics of the South Caucasus.

Executors of the project (Anna Kanjaradze, Tamar Abuladze, Nino Lordkifanidze, Nato Gugava) conducted a whole number of works, on the basis of which the presentation of the legislative initiative is planned to eradicate just this very defect.