Skip to Main Content
Go to ILO main website
Français
Español
 
 
 
Home
KIR-2001-L-84063
Breadcrumb
Title_of_text
Penal Code (Amendment) Act, 2001 (No. 15 of 2001).
Main Region
First Region
Country(ies)
Kiribati
Subjects (Classification)
Criminal and penal law
Adopted on (Date of text)
2001
Scope of text
National
Type of legislation (Type of text)
Law, Act
Second Region
Abstract/Citation
This short Act seeks to amend the Penal Code with a view to empower the Court to admit as evidence in court any document whether it is an original or a copy of the original as the case may be in a criminal prosecution of a person who has been charged with larceny or theft of document specified under section 256.
It is also proposed that a person possessing a copy of a document under this section once amended will give rise to an inference that such person has stolen the document unless he displaces the inference by adducing contrary evidence.
Under this section 256 of the Penal Code, it would seem that no offence of theft of a document is committed if the offender steals only a copy of such document in question. However, the advance in modern photocopying technology does not appear to support such distinction between an original document or a copy of the document as a photocopied document in most if not all cases looks just as good as an original document.
Furthermore whether the offender steals an original document or a copy of such document, such theft of the document is still a theft of the same document. It might be the case also that such copy is the only copy available.
Hence the deletion of the word "original" as appears throughout section 256 of the Penal Code (Section 2 of the Act).
Electronic region
Electronic source title
Act on-line
Author
PacLII
Publisher
University of the South Pacific
URL
http://www.paclii.org/ki/legis/num_act/pca2001167/
File
KIR84063.pdf (PDF)