HOUSE ARREST AS AN ALTERNATIVE TO PRISON SENTENCE IN MODERN GEORGIAN LAW (Evolution and Transformation)

Abstract

This article is about house arrest, one of the types of non-custodial punishment in modern Georgian law, where the legal problems of using this benefit, provided by the law, are discussed, which is based on a deep analysis of practice and research of a number of scientific works. The importance of the topic was determined by the unfavorable state of the domestic legislation, the existence of a non-homogenous practice on the part of the court in relation to the “revision” of the decisions made by the local councils of the special penitentiary service, the incalculability of statistical data, as well as the great practical importance of the said topic in the process of both law-making and law enforcement, due to the paucity of modern Georgian legal literature regarding this concept. The aim of this article is to clarify the legal nature and the extent of house arrest, not only on the example of Georgia, but also on the example of some foreign countries, which will make the process of scientific research of the legal problems, of replacing the remaining sentence with house arrest, even more interesting and diverse. In addition, the article also aims to analyze the errors made in the applied practice and to develop scientifically based recommendations to eliminate the gaps in the rules regulating house arrest. The results of the theoretical/empirical research allow legal analysis to be made on the introduction/establishment of non-custodial punishment, which was previously unfamiliar to our country; to what extent the aforementioned legislative innovation was justified and what can be done for its further refinement/perfection, which is ultimately aimed to prohibit the usage of non-homogenous practice, regarding the use of the mentioned legal mechanism, on the part of both the decision-making body and the court. Historical, formal-logical, dogmatic, formal-legal, comparative-legal, descriptive and systematic methods were used to study the problem, posed in a separate chapter of the article. Furthermore, the data of legal statistics was used to study and generalize the practice of local councils, as well as the court, and the final part is devoted to the conclusive decrees obtained as a result of the study and scientific processing of the raised issues.