Violence Against the Elderly: Mandatory Jail Sentence (Israel)

Knesset okays mandatory jail sentence for violence against the elderly

By Shahar Ilan, Haaretz Correspondent
25/02/2008

The Knesset plenum on Monday approved an amendment to the penal law that calls for a mandatory jail sentence for anyone convicted of attacking the elderly. The amendment stipulates that if a judge wants to avoid handing down a prison sentence, he would have to submit a written justification.

The amendment was approved in its second and third readings.

The new law stems from a long line of initiatives aimed at cracking down on assailants that target the elderly. One of the foremost among these initiatives was one proposed by MK David Rotem (Yisrael Beiteinu) who suggested penalizing perpetrators with a mandatory jail term of ten years for assaulting an elderly person, and 20 years for causing egregious harm to an elderly person.
The maximum penalty for causing harm to an elderly person was raised to five years from three years. The maximum penalty for causing egregious harm remains seven years.

Abridged
SOURCE: haaretz
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