USR will file on Monday a bill on repealing the compensation appeals law, based on which thousands of detainees were released from prison before completing the detention term.

PNL deputy Florin Roman also announced on Sunday night that he would submit a bill that would provide that people who commit “crimes of violence, murder, attempted murder, robbery or rape” will no longer benefit from the compensatory regime law.

The magistrates’ association also requested the Romanian Parliament to initiate the procedures for the abrogation of the Compensatory Appeal Law no. 169/2017.

All these initiatives come amid the multiplication of violent crimes committed by detainees who have benefited from the effects of the law and left prisons earlier.

The Compensatory Appeal Law was justified by using the European findings on the detention conditions in Romania. The problem is old, but Romanian authorities did not go through structural reforms in the field. And the idea of “reducing congestion” in penitentiaries by shortening the detention period is wrong, given that, statistically, one cannot talk about the effectiveness of the reintegration programs of detainees into society.

The Compensation Appeal Law, initiated in 2016, was modified by PSD lawmakers for the benefit of detainees and provides that those imprisoned in inhuman conditions benefit from a six day cut from the detention period for every 30 days already executed.

188 prisoners released committed robberies, rapes, crimes

According to the Ministry of Internal Affairs’ statistics, over the last year more than 10,500 detainees have benefited from the provisions of this law, who were released before completing the detention term. In an official reply to a question raised by PNL deputy Florin Roman, the Ministry of Justice states that 188 of the detainees released under the Compensation Appeal Law returned to prison after committing robbery, rape, murder, attempted murder.

Former Prime Minister Vlad Voiculescu says that “Tudorel Toader is, at least from the moral point of view, an accomplice to all the crimes and rapes committed by those released by him.”

In the last month, several cases in which suspects are persons released following the compensatory appeal have shocked the population and brought this law into question:

• a young woman from Alba Iulia was violently hit in an apartment building and her phone was stolen
• a 15-year-old teenager in Constanta was robbed in the street
• a woman from Timisoara was robbed after being cruelly beaten by a man
• an interlope in Iasi raped a young 17-year-old
• a young man was killed Saturday night in Medias, three suspects have been detained, two of whom were previously released based on the compensatory appeal