Amnesty is the complete abolition of a crime by the state, resulting in charges or convictions being canceled and forgotten. It differs from legal forgiveness and can be granted to avoid punitive measures or achieve reconciliation. The concept dates back to ancient Greece and can be granted to those charged but not convicted. Amnesty is often extended to the losing side after a war or revolution, and can also be offered to lawbreakers to encourage compliance with the law.
Amnesty is a legal term that describes the complete abolition of a crime by the state. The legal result is that any charges or convictions are canceled and forgotten, and those people who have been charged or convicted are then considered innocent. This concept differs from legal forgiveness because “pardon” implies that an offense is forgiven, rather than completely forgotten. Amnesty is often granted because a government authority decides that the need for lawbreakers to abide by the law trumps the importance of taking punitive measures against them. It can also be granted to the losing side after the end of a war or revolution, in an effort to achieve a reconciliation, or to avoid the high costs of prosecuting large numbers of perpetrators.
The earliest recorded example of the term dates back to ancient Greece. In this case, the city of Athens was defeated by the city of Sparta and a new oligarchic governing body, named the Thirty Tyrants, was established by the Spartan conquerors. This government has been responsible for a number of executions and human rights violations. An Athenian general named Thrasybulus, who had been exiled to Thebes for opposing the Thirty Tyrants, raised a force of several hundred men and returned to Athens to oust the tyrants. Thrasybulus restored democracy to Athens and one of his first acts as leader was the issuing of a law granting amnesty to the majority of the oligarchs of the former regime.
This legal concept is often confused with that of forgiveness, in which offenses are forgiven rather than forgotten. In fact, the word “amnesty” itself shares a common root with the word “amnesia,” which means memory loss. Another distinction between the terms is that pardons can only be granted to people who have already been convicted, while amnesty can be granted to people who have been charged, but not yet convicted.
Often, amnesty is extended to individuals on the losing side of a war or revolution after the conflict has ended. For example, citizens of the Confederacy during the American Civil War were told that their secession would be forgotten if they took an oath of allegiance to the United States under President Andrew Johnson. Similarly, the 1995 South African Truth and Reconciliation Committee considered requests for amnesty by prosecution petitioners who had committed acts of violence under the apartheid system. Amnesty can also be offered to lawbreakers to get them to comply with the law, often by delivering contraband or providing information to law officials.
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