The Overreliance on Termed Imprisonment and the Challenges within Youth Criminal Sentencing Framework: The Case of Vietnam

Abstract

Despite some reforms in youth criminal justice policy, Vietnam keeps witnessing termed imprisonment as the most frequent sentence for young offenders. Taking this as the most urgent issue, the authors of this paper clarifies that the reasons for this phenomenon remain within the sentencing regime. Some derive from integrating juvenile sentencing regime into the traditional criminal system. The others come from Vietnamese traditional criminal law’s theoretical and practical controversies. In addition, the paper also discusses the ambiguity of the nature of supervisory and educational measures and the issue of the discretion assigned to judicial authorities to the extent they harm upholding the child right-based approach. To conclude, the paper offers some recommendations for Vietnam to overcome these short- and long-term challenges.