Are defendants convicted of less serious crimes detained?

Reply: According to the provisions of Article 119 of the 2015 Criminal Procedure Code, temporary detention is not only applied to particularly serious or very serious crimes, but in certain cases can also be applied to suspects and defendants who have committed serious or less serious crimes.

Article 119. Temporary detention

1. Detention may be applied to suspects and defendants of particularly serious crimes or very serious crimes.

2. Detention may be applied to suspects and defendants for serious or less serious crimes for which the Penal Code prescribes a prison sentence of more than 02 years when there is basis to determine that the person falls into one of the following cases:

a) Having been subject to other preventive measures but still violating;

b) The defendant has no clear place of residence or cannot determine his/her background;

c) Escape and be arrested according to a wanted decision or show signs of escape;

d) Continuing to commit crimes or showing signs of continuing to commit crimes;

d) Bribing, coercing, inciting others to make false statements, providing false documents; destroying, forging evidence, documents, objects of the case, dispersing assets related to the case; threatening, controlling, taking revenge on witnesses, victims, crime whistleblowers and relatives of these people.

3. Detention may be applied to suspects and defendants of less serious crimes for which the Penal Code prescribes a prison sentence of up to 02 years if they continue to commit crimes or escape and are arrested pursuant to a wanted decision.

Specifically, the offenderless seriousmay be detained if one of the following circumstances occurs:

• The crime has a prison sentence of more than 2 years and there is a basis to determine that the accused has violated other preventive measures, has no clear place of residence, shows signs of absconding, continues to commit crimes, or has acts that obstruct the investigation such as destroying evidence, bribing witnesses, threatening people who report crimes, etc.
• In cases where the crime carries a prison sentence of up to two years, detention shall only be applied if the accused continues to commit crimes or flees and is arrested pursuant to a wanted notice.

In addition, the law also stipulates that certain special subjects (pregnant women, people raising children under 36 months old, the elderly, the seriously ill, etc.) will not be detained if they have a clear place of residence and background, unless there are special grounds such as escape or destruction of evidence.

Thus, in the case that Ms. Mai mentioned, if the person prosecuted for the crime of "disturbing public order" hasIf the penalty is over 2 years in prison and falls under one of the above cases, the investigation agency's application of temporary detention during the litigation stage is justified.On the contrary, if these factors are not present, the prosecution agency must not detain but must apply other preventive measures., such as bail or house arrest.