The Premier pleaded for stability at the level of the Interior Ministry’s leadership.
A person that committed a crime has to end up in a penitentiary, but it is just as important for the state to recover the financial damages caused, because otherwise the goal has not been totally reached, Premier Victor Ponta stated yesterday at the Police review. “We should think at first just as the American and then the European side is thinking, namely what to do not just to catch and punish the one breaking the penal law, but especially to recover the damages, especially to recover the money he obtained illegally, especially to know how to spend little and to recover as much as possible, not the other way around,” Ponta said. In this sense he gave the example of Germany, adding at the same time that the mentality should be changed in Romania too, in order for the proceeds of the crime to end up in the budget and then to be earmarked for the Interior, Justice, Health and Education ministries. He assured police officers that as long as he is the Prime Minister the employees of the Interior Ministry will be protected from any possible political interference.
The Premier pleaded for stability at the level of the Interior Ministry’s leadership, pointing out that from this point of view Liberal Klaus Iohannis will be the fifth Interior Minister in less than two years. “Precisely because this stability did not exist at the Interior Ministry’s political level – Mr. Iohannis will be the fifth Interior Minister in less than two years – the fact that we have stability at the level of the Romanian Police makes me glad even more so. I want to congratulate Mr. Toba and the others from the various structures of the Romanian Police,” Ponta said.
Behavior profiling service for dangerous criminals
Petre Toba, the head of the Romanian Police’s General Inspectorate (IGPR), announced yesterday at the conference at which the institution’s 2013 review was presented that a new structure was set up at the level of IGPR. The new structure is the behavioral analysis service that will deal with compiling the behavioral profiles of dangerous criminals. Toba explained that this is a service that is currently in the process of selecting its employees, the latter set to be psychologists, sociologists and judiciary policemen. Toba pointed out that the new structure will work solely at the central level of the Romanian Police and will have as subjects solely violent criminals considered extremely dangerous. “We plan to collaborate with the FBI too, which has a great deal of experience in the case of such structures,” the head of IGPR added.
The head of IGPR also announced that 500 police officers are currently working within the judiciary supervision bureaus set up at national level after the new Codes came into force. According to Toba, simultaneously with the setting up of these structures an IT program has been developed at the level of the Romanian Police, a program in which all persons against which the courts “took restrictive measures short of jail time” were introduced.
Ankle monitors not mandatory
Ankle monitors for those under house arrest are not a mandatory measure, the persons currently in this situation being periodically verified by police officers in order to see whether they respect the obligations imposed by the courts, Petre Toba stated. He said that the provision concerning ankle monitors was included in the Penal Code ever since 200, however it was never ordered by court because there is no legal framework that would regulate the way and conditions of using them. Toba pointed out that ankle monitors are used in 16 EU states and are not used in another 11 states, because five of the latter lack the legislation and the other six have noticed that the financial effort is too high.
