Having babies: effective way to avoid imprisonment

17:50' 30/07/2007 (GMT+7)

Nguyen Thi Thoan and Do Thi Bao VietNamNet Bridge – Nguyen Thi Thoan from the northern mountainous province of Lao Cai publicly deals drugs but she is not arrested because she is always pregnant. There are many female drug traders who are sentenced but not in prison because they are busy having children like Thoan. Arrested so I must have baby Many female offenders use motherhood for a legal defence. In many cases, they have been sentenced but for some reason they are allowed to be out on bail. When the verdicts take effect and they must go to jail, legal agencies can’t send them to prison because those female offenders are pregnant. To avoid going to jail, many female offenders have children without stopping and nobody can touch them. Though there are no official statistics about this subject of female offenders, the number is quite large. In Lao Cai province, there are around 50 women of this kind, all of who are drug traders. The most ‘famous’ case is Nguyen Thi Thoan, a primary teacher in Lao Cai province, who publicly deals drugs but police can’t arrest her because she is always pregnant. Every time police invite doctors to examine Thoan, she is always pregnant at around 4-5 months and police, thus, must wait for three years. But when her verdict comes into effect, Thoan continues to be pregnant. This woman has stated: “If you arrest me, I’ll have more babies.” Lai Chau province has Do Thi Bao, a drug criminal who is also a ‘child delivery machine’. Notably, though she is not married she continuously has babies. In HCM City, there is also a female drug trader who has delivered 7-8 children to avoid being arrested. Another case, a female offender named Dieu Thi Huong, who can’t have children, has adopted abandoned children to dodge the law. How to deal with them? Some legal experts said that this problem results from a gap in the law. According to Article 88 of the Penal Action Code, women who are pregnant or have small babies of less than 36 months are not put in prison except for the cases in which their out-on-bail can hinder investigation. This is a humanity policy of the Vietnamese state for pregnant women and those who are nurturing small babies of less than 36 months, but this policy has been abused by offenders. According to Article 55 of the Penal Code, the prescription for a verdict is five years for those who are sentenced to three years in jail or less, ten years for those who are sentenced to 3-15 years in jail, 15 years for those who are sentenced to 15-30 years in jail. Under documents guiding the implementation of the Penal Code, the prescription of a verdict is applied for verdicts that are effective but are not implemented due to being forgotten or being lost. In case the verdict is temporarily canceled for some reasons, after this time the defenders must perform the verdict. However, offenders who are sentenced to less than three years in prison and are ill or have babies can enjoy sentence cancellations many times. If the time of cancellation is equal to the prescription of their verdict and during this period they don’t commit a new offence they will be exempted from imprisonment. This is the gap that has been abused by offenders. According to Phan Tanh, vice presiding judge of the HCM City People’s Court, this situation has stirred discontentment in the public but there is no way to deal with it because ‘that’s the law’. Viet Nam Net