Recidivist misdemeanor theft after the amendment to the Criminal Code effective from December 2025
Act No. 416/2025 Coll., amending and supplementing Act No. 300/2005 Coll., Criminal Code, entered into force on December 27, 2025 and brought a significant change in the legal regulation of the crime of theft. The legislator responded mainly to the long-term increasing number of repeated misdemeanor thefts, which in practice often escape effective criminal law response. The amendment introduces a special factual basis for the so-called recidivist misdemeanor theft, regulated in Section 212, paragraph 1, letter g) of the Criminal Code.
According to Section 212, paragraph 1, letter g) of the Criminal Code punishes "anyone who appropriates another's property by taking possession of it, and has been convicted of two similar acts in the previous twelve months."
Compared to the previous legal regulation effective until 6 August 2024, which required only one previous conviction, this is a tightening of the legal conditions for criminal liability. The new wording does not represent a simple return to the original concept, but introduces a qualitatively new qualification in the form of two previous convictions for similar acts.
This change is also significant from the point of view of the systematics of the Criminal Code, as it affects the assessment of recidivism under Section 212(2)(b) of the Criminal Code.
From the point of view of application practice, the amendment raises a fundamental question as to whether all three acts (the two previous acts and the third, criminally relevant act) must have been committed after the amendment entered into force, i.e. after 27 December 2025.
The interpretation is based on the fact that:
the criminality of an act under Section 212(1)(g) of the Criminal Code arises only with the third unlawful act,
the third act must have been committed after 27 December 2025,
the previous two acts may have been committed before this date, if they are similar acts, the perpetrator was legally punished for them, all three acts fall within a period of 12 months, counted retrospectively from the third act.
At this moment, a qualitative change in the legal assessment of the perpetrator's actions occurs - not as a result of retroactive criminalization, but as a result of the accumulation of repeated unlawful actions in the legally established period.
The above interpretation is fully consistent with the prohibition of retroactivity expressed in Art. 50 of the Constitution of the Slovak Republic and in Section 2, Paragraph 1 of the Criminal Code. The prohibition of retroactive application of criminal law protects an individual from being punished for an action that was not criminal at the time of its commission.
In the analyzed case, the previous two acts remain misdemeanors and are not retroactively criminalized, the criminal sanction is tied exclusively to the third act, committed already during the effectiveness of the new legal regulation, and the previous disabilities fulfil the function of a personal qualifying feature, or rather. a feature of recidivism.
For the same reasons, there is no violation of the principle of ne bis in idem. The offender is not punished again for previous offenses, but for a new act, the criminality of which results from his repeated criminal activity.
