Representation in Compulsory-Treatment Cases
The Georgian title of this page is a garbled machine translation flagged for editorial correction; the actual subject is medico-legal defence — the analysis of the institutions that concern a person suffering from drug addiction when the court appoints compulsory treatment. A guiding boundary is noted: the proper regime of substitution therapy (methadone or buprenorphine programmes) lives in the law on narcological assistance and health-ministry acts and lies outside this page; the Criminal Code regulates precisely the coercive medical intervention against which defence is needed — its grounds, nature, duration and discontinuation.
Grounds and Nature — Articles 79-1 and 79-2
The Code names two grounds: the person suffering from drug addiction committed a crime under the drug chapter; or, after committing such a crime and before a guilty verdict, the person was diagnosed with dependence on a specially controlled substance. The nature is dual: compulsory treatment is appointed together with the sentence, on the basis of a conclusion of the commission of physician-narcologists, for a term of not more than two years; it may be appointed upon full release from the sentence or conditional credit of the sentence, and upon conditional early release its continuation is possible. The law defines the purposes precisely as well: prevention of a new crime or unlawful act, protection of public order and the population, and the cure of the person — and adds directly: the purpose is not the physical torment of the person or the degradation of his dignity. The aims of compulsory treatment are the prevention of a new crime or unlawful act, the protection of public order and of the population, and the cure of the person. It may be appointed upon full release from the sentence or upon its conditional credit, and upon release on parole its continuation remains possible.