Document 173 - Amendment to the Criminal Code – RJ

Scope: pages 1–3.

The amendment repeals points 3 through 7 of the main proposal, thereby removing the newly introduced criminal offense in Section 302 for the unjustified killing of a dog or cat out of reprehensible motives. It justifies this by arguing that it constitutes a disproportionate expansion of criminal law without sufficient expert analysis, data, or impact assessment. The proposal also points out the ambiguity of the term “reprehensible motive” and the inconsistent preferential treatment of only dogs and cats over other animals. The goal is to keep these acts outside the scope of the new criminal legislation for the time being and not to adopt this change without a broader expert discussion.

Scope: Part One–Part Three; § 9d–§ 10; pages 1–5.

The amendment expands the bill to include a change to the Act on the Criminal Register and the Record of Misdemeanors. An entry in the registry relevant to working with children is to automatically apply only to aggravated bodily injury committed against a child under 15 years of age, not to all cases of this offense. At the same time, bodily injury caused to a child is excluded from automatic registration; however, a court may still order such a registration in individual cases.

Scope: Part One–Part Three; Section 9d; pages 1–4.

The amendment also expands the proposed amendment to include a change to Act No. 270/2025 Coll. concerning the registration of information relevant to working with children. Retroactive automatic entries starting in 2027 are to be limited to convictions under the Criminal Code in order to reduce the risk of erroneous entries from older cases. At the same time, the requirement that the conviction must have occurred no earlier than 2005 is being repealed; the only determining factor will be whether the statutory retention period for the record has yet expired.

Scope: Part One–Part Five; § 2d–§ 93a; pages 1–7.

The amendment expands the main proposal to include changes to the rules governing the child certificate, i.e., the record of information relevant to working with children. For children under the age of fifteen and juveniles, a record shall be created only on the basis of an explicit court decision regarding a risk to children, not automatically; the special automatic assessment of juvenile perpetrators of sexual abuse is also repealed. The retroactive addition of records starting in 2027 is not to apply to individuals who committed the offense as juveniles. The proposal adjusts the related procedures of the courts, the public prosecutor’s office, and the criminal records registry.

Scope: Part One–Part Three; § 9d–§ 10; pages 1–5.

The proposed amendment also extends the amendment to the Criminal Code under consideration to include a change to the Act on the Criminal Record and the Register of Misdemeanors. It removes “causing bodily harm to a child under 15 years of age” from the list of criminal offenses that generally result automatically in an entry in the registry for working with children. However, for this offense, the court may still impose a record on a case-by-case basis if it finds a risk to children. The proposal responds in particular to one-time or peer-related violent incidents, for which an automatic entry may not be proportionate.