Iudex non calculat? Determining the sentence remnant after revocation of the conditional release
When offenders are conditionally released from prison, a part of the prison sentence is not executed
in prison. However, in case of revocation of the conditional release – and the re-incarceration of the
released person –, the sentence implementation court must decide which part of the ‘sentence remnant’
is put into force again. The legislator and the Court of Cassation did, however, not specify how this
calculation has to be done. As a consequence, the sentence implementation court has de facto the full
appreciation in determining the sentence remnant. File analyses conducted in all Belgian sentence implementation
courts demonstrated that different decision-making practices exist between the courts.
These differences relate to the determination of the period during which the released person complied
with the conditions, but also to how this period is taken into account for the recalculation of the sentence
remnant. These different decision-making practices lead to significant disparities in outcome for
those who have been recalled to prison, which leads to unequal treatment of recalled conditionally
released persons. Therefore,