GYLA held a presentation of the N16 report on the monitoring of criminal legal processes, which reflects the main findings revealed during the consideration of criminal cases in the court in the period from March 2021 to September 2022, on the basis of which the organization prepared recommendations.

According to the document, in the reporting period, bail and imprisonment remain the non-alternative preventive measures. According to the organization, GY­LA monitors attended 490 sessions of the first appearance of the accused in court, with the participation of 559 accused, of which 531 (95%) persons were sentenced to preventive measures, and the court did not use any form of preventive measures against 28 (5%) persons, in addition, the prosecution didn't request the use of preventive measure only in relation to 10 persons.

"During the reporting period, the court granted bail to 271 (51%) defendants as a preventive measure. The prosecution requested bail for 226 (40%) persons. The court did not grant the prosecution's request in only 22 (10%) cases. The court used the minimum amount of bail for 52 (19%) defendants. For 134 (49%) persons, the court used bail with provision of imprisonment.

Other important trends revealed during the observation of the hearings: Request/use of imprisonment: the Prosecutor's Office requested the use of imprisonment for 323 (58%) of the defendants. In 73 (22%) of these cases, the court rejected the request of the Prosecutor's Office.

According to GY­LA, the imprisonment applied to 82 (32%) persons was unjustified or improperly justified. It should be noted that compared to the previous reporting period, the rate of imprisonment has decreased by 6 percent. In the current reporting period, 353 (63%) of the defendants appeared before the court as detainees in 268 hearings.

Court control and mistreatment by the police: It is alarming that 9 defendants who appeared in court spoke about mistreatment by the police. The control of the court is still weak without essential consideration of the case, in the part of sentencing motions and assessment of the legality of detention, also, it is worth noting that it took the court only 15 minutes to impose preventive detention on 33 (13%) persons. Compared to the previous reporting period, the plea agreements for particularly serious crimes has increased by four percentage points. An alarming case was revealed when the defense party appeared at the trial with a payment receipt in hand and said that the fine stipulated in the protocol of the plea agreement was paid in advance.

Cases of femicide and domestic violence: cases of femicide, murder of women are still an acute problem. During the reporting period, GY­LA observed a number of cases of murder of women, which were related to family crime. Also, as a result of monitoring, the fact of forced marriage was revealed. The court sentenced 56 (46%) persons accused of domestic violence to prison, 59 (48%) - bail, and 1 (1%) accused - an agreement on non-leaving and appropriate behavior. In this last case, the accused was a woman. The judge left 6 (5%) persons accused of domestic violence without preventive measures. The report also discusses other such issues and the results of the observation of the sessions, in which public interest was high during the current year.

The report was prepared within the framework of the project "Monitoring of the Judiciary" funded by the Embassy of the Netherlands. GY­LA is responsible for the content of the report. The opinions expressed therein may not reflect the views of the Embassy of the Netherlands," the report reads.