The application of house arrest as a form of sanction will start in the second half of the year, ie as of August, the Ministry of Justice told Dnevne Novine newspaper. Currently, some 70 persons in Montenegro have been sentenced to house arrest.
This punishing method, which has been stipulated by the law since 2015, should significantly unburden the Montenegrin prison system.
The Probation Directorate is in charge for enforcing the modality of the prison sentence. The manner of enforcing sentence of imprisonment in premises where the convicted person resides is defined by the regulations dealing with this matter.
The regulations stipulate wearing ankle monitors in order to observe convicts’ moving.
The convicted person is obliged to constantly wear the electronic monitor. He/she is allowed to be outside his/her home up to two hours a day. The convict must not leave the place of residence without special court permission, except in cases when he/she needs an urgent medical treatment or when he/she has to go to trial, work, exam, etc.
Persons convicted of minor offenses from the field of transport, petty thefts or drug abuse, ie the offences which the law stipulates up to six months in prison, have the right to such a sentence.
The ministry, along with Crnogorski Telekom, has procured 87 ankle monitors and the accompanying electronic equipment so far. The US Embassy to Montenegro is one of the donors and it organised a tender for procuring hardware and software necessary for the implementation of house arrest.
The value of the tender called by the US Embassy is $192,000.
