Imprisonment for International Crimes : An Interdisciplinary Analysis of the ICTY Sentence Enforcement Practice

Abstract

The analysis of the ICTY sentence enforcement practice this study provides and the accompanying recommendations for improvement of the vertical system for enforcement of international sentences serve as a powerful means through which to reconsider fundamental assumptions about the criminality of perpetrators of international crimes, their imprisonment and penal rehabilitation, purposes and legitimacy of international sentencing in general, and its impact on the broader goals of international criminal justice. 2In order to indicate structural and legislative continuity between the ICTY and the MICT, two bodies shall be referred to under the same banner throughout the study, the "ICTY/MICT" or the "Tribunal/Mechanism", and will be referred to separately only when there is a noteworthy discrepancy in their normative provisions or enforcement practice. Persons convicted by the ICTY/MICT are, however, predominantly referred to as "ICTY convicts" or "ICTY prisoners" and their sentences as "ICTY sentences". ____________ 3To paraphrase the well-known chant of the three witches in Shakespeare's Macbeth: "Fair is foul, and foul is fair" (Shakespeare 2016 [1606], p. 3).Chapter 6 opens the second, empirical section of the study. Here, the practice of designating the states of enforcement, enforcement in different national prisons as well as post-release lives of ex-prisoners are explored. The chapter delineates the governing principles of such an enforcement, the division of prerogatives between the ICTY/MICT and national prison authorities within the system, the extent of inequality in treatment between the prisoners and major challenges for the overall abidance of the system to the penal concept of offenders' rehabilitation.