Proposal to pilot the issuance of Criminal Record Certificates in 3 local districts

The Ministry of Justice is proposing to develop a Resolution on piloting the decentralization of the issuance of Criminal Records.

The Ministry of Justice said that the 2009 Law on Judicial Records (LJR) stipulates that the competent authority to issue JR Certificates includes the National JR Center - Ministry of Justice and the provincial Department of Justice.

Implementing the Party and State's policies on simplifying administrative procedures, strengthening decentralization and delegation of power, and overcoming the situation of delay in issuing criminal records in the past, the Ministry of Justice proposes to decentralize the authority to issue criminal records to the district-level Justice Department.

However, this is new content, so the Ministry of Justice proposed to conduct a pilot implementation in some district-level units of some provinces and centrally-run cities. After the end of the pilot implementation period, the Ministry of Justice will summarize and evaluate the implementation, report to the Government to report to the National Assembly , the results of the pilot implementation will be the basis for studying and amending the Law on Criminal Procedure.

The decentralization of authority to issue Criminal Record Certificates to the District-level Department of Justice will be different from the current provisions of the Law. According to the provisions of Point b, Clause 2, Article 15 of the Law on Promulgation of Legal Documents, this pilot decentralization must be stipulated in the Resolution of the National Assembly "The National Assembly issues a resolution to regulate the pilot implementation of a number of new policies under the decision-making authority of the National Assembly but which have no governing laws or are different from the provisions of current laws".

The Law on Temporary Residence was passed by the 12th National Assembly, 5th session on June 17, 2009 and took effect from July 1, 2010. After 10 years of implementation, the Law on Temporary Residence has truly come into effect, basically meeting the requirements of State management and the increasing demand for temporary residence cards from citizens, ensuring compliance with the process of judicial reform, building a professional, modern and internationally integrated administration.

In addition to the achieved results, the work of LLTP has also revealed certain difficulties and limitations such as: Resources and facilities for serving LLTP work are still limited; Regarding the work of building, managing, using and exploiting the LLTP Database, there is still a backlog of information that has not been processed and updated into the LLTP Database. There is still a situation where information updated into the LLTP Database is not accurate and synchronized between the LLTP Database at the Ministry of Justice and the LLTP Database of 63 Departments of Justice; Regarding the work of issuing LLTP Certificates, the situation of abusing the request for issuing LLTP Certificate No. 2 is increasingly common, affecting the right to personal privacy protection, the humanitarian policy of the criminal law of our State; affecting the reintegration of convicted people, especially those whose criminal records have been cleared. There is still a situation of delay in issuing LLTP Certificates.

In order to overcome the situation of delay in issuing temporary residence cards in the past, it is necessary to synchronously implement many different solutions: such as strengthening coordination between competent agencies, applying digital technology ,... in which decentralizing the authority to issue temporary residence cards to the district-level Justice Department is a necessary solution.

The Ministry of Justice proposed to pilot the decentralization of the issuance of Temporary Residence Cards to a number of Justice Departments under the People's Committees at the district level in Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City and Nghe An province.

According to statistics, currently Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City and Nghe An province are the three localities with the largest number of requests for temporary residence cards in the country. From 2021 to 2023, on average, Hanoi issued 51,211 temporary residence cards each year, Ho Chi Minh City issued 95,979 temporary residence cards, and Nghe An province issued 56,900 temporary residence cards. In the context of limited human resources, equipment, and facilities of the Department of Justice, receiving a large number of applications has caused overload for the temporary residence card department in these localities. There were times when people had to queue up very early to submit their applications for temporary residence cards, causing public outrage.

Currently, Hanoi has 30 district-level administrative units; Ho Chi Minh City has 22 district-level administrative units; Nghe An province has 21 district-level administrative units. The pilot decentralization of the issuance of temporary residence cards to district-level administrative units in Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City and Nghe An province is extremely necessary at the present stage, contributing to reducing direct pressure on the Department of Justice in handling procedures for issuing temporary residence cards as well as creating more convenience for people when they can go to the district-level Justice Department to carry out procedures for issuing temporary residence cards, increasing the initiative of district-level administrative units in handling administrative procedures.

The Ministry of Justice proposed a pilot implementation period of 2 years for this policy, which is enough time for localities to prepare resources for implementation, and also enough time for preliminary and final review before proposing amendments to the Law's provisions for nationwide application.

Source