Constitutional and Public Laws Stream Probation under Ethiopian Criminal Justice System the Law and Practice
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Date
2018-06
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
The study deals with the legal framework and practice of probation in the Ethiopian criminal justice system. The significance of probation has greatly enlarged and acquired substantial support in the modern criminal justice system. Probation should be allowed by means of due care. To do this, there should be conditions to be followed and institutions mandated with the duty to follow up the probationer to implement the probation. There should be responsible institution whether it is governmental, nongovernmental or mixed according to the situations of a given country. The same is true in Ethiopia because the concept of probation is incorporated in our criminal justice system in both substantive and procedural laws. Since the beginning of 19th century, many countries incorporated the concept of probation in their criminal justice system. Researches show the efforts to update the procedures and application of probation at national and international level. But in Ethiopia, decades have passed without modernizing the concept of probation although it is significant; it is being applied without systematic mechanisms. Since probation is one of the mechanisms of implementing punishment, it should be applied in light of theories of punishment, principally the reform and rehabilitation of the probationer which is recognized in the FDRE Criminal Code and integration of them into the community. The Code provides purposes, mechanisms and the effects of probation. It further emphasizes that remittance of a sentence where the probation is successfully undergone. But in practice, there is a problem of implementation of probation particularly, evaluating the behavior, supervising, controlling, assessing the outcome are missing points. Besides, although decades passed since Ethiopia enacted modern Criminal Code, there is no institutional set up that manages probation effectively. Considering these problems, discussion is made by taking international standards and trends of other countries in assumption of getting lessons from them to increase understanding of justice organs concerning the concept of probation and to identify gap filling mechanisms to practical problems, in case of non uniformity of the administration of probation. Lastly, the effects of successfully undergone probation are addressed.
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Keywords
probation, inquiry, conditional suspension of penalty, supervision and monitoring