Press reports in Athens on Thursday referred to another “get-tough” amendment to Greece’s criminal code being prepared by the justice ministry to require a mandatory jailing for a defendant accused of a serious felony while out on conditional bail for similar charges.
Under the current penal code it’s up to a relevant investigating magistrate and prosecutor to decide if a defendant’s bail is revoked and incarceration is ordered in cases where the latter has violated release conditions, initiates actions aimed at a flight from justice, or fails to appear on court dates.
The purported change in the specific criminal code article will specify a mandatory remand in case of new felony charges filed on a defendant out on bail.
The target of the stricter revision are hardened and professional criminals who despite being arrested and arraigned and subsequently released with various bail conditions attached, but who nevertheless continue criminal activities.
In case where such as defendant is re-arrested and charged with a misdemeanor while awaiting trial for another offense, then an investigating magistrate of judicial council will decide on pre-trial jailing.
The current center-right Mitsotakis government has previously stiffened the penal code in the country and reversed a decades-old trend of abolishing jail time for most misdemeanors, allowing bail for suspects accused of even serious felonies and making prison sentences more lenient – even for aggravated murder, which prior to 2019 in many cases meant less than 20 years behind bars.