Government failure to prosecute offenders

In Argentina, for example, the government passed a series of decrees pardoning almost all those convicted as responsible for human rights abuses involving the forced disappearance of an estimated 15,000 people during the military dictatorship's operations in the 1970s and 1980s. Several Italian politicians accused in corruption scandals were pardoned in 1992 by emergency parliamentary decrees which decriminalized offences involving financing political parties with illegally-raised funds.

1. The wholesale pardoning of killers may churn stomachs, but an amnesty makes political sense. In the case of South Africa it helped secure a settlement. It is an important option in other regional conflicts.

1. Unethical practices in the legal system
2. Inadequate national law enforcement
3. Inadequate enforcement of human rights
4. Deficiencies in the criminal justice system
5. Criminals

1. Injustice of military tribunals
2. Ineffective war crime prosecution
3. Inadequate evidence to convict known offenders

1. Premature release of offenders
2. Neglect of victims of crime
3. International criminal activity

1. Unavailability of legal information
2. Premature exoneration of human rights abuses
3. Governmental abuse of extradition

1. Punishment

1. Legal inconsistency
2. Excessive leniency in sentencing of offenders

1. Reducing prison sentences
2. Punishing international criminals
3. Punishing crimes
4. Providing inadequate punishment of international criminals in their own countries
5. Prosecuting offenders
6. Pardoning
7. Judging criminals
8. Developing international penal code
9. Improving punishment of international criminals in their own countries
10. Changing prison sentences

1. Failure
2. Punishment
3. Inadequacy
4. Crime
5. Offence
6. Reduction
7. Arbitrary