We found a match
Your institution may have access to this item. Find your institution then sign in to continue.
- Title
HARMONIZATION OF THE PENAL POLICY - A CHALLENGE TO THE CRIMINAL THEORY AND PRACTICE.
- Authors
ZENDELI, Arta BILALLI; SLAMKOV, Gjorgi; Latifi, Vesel; Beka, Agron
- Abstract
The Judiciary Reform Strategy of the Republic of Macedonia from November 2004 outlined the need for serious reforms in the penal and procedural area. After years of research, surveys and preparations, in November 2010 was adopted the new Code of Criminal Procedure. It carries out substantial changes in the whole system as testing the foundations of the penal proceedings, its goals, values and structures. It is a comprehensive systemic reform that diverges from the combined continental system, and more intensively incorporating accusatory elements. The main point of amending the criminal-procedural legislation lies in the idea of changing the investigation or replacing the judicial investigation with prosecutorial investigation. However, changes in this part of the procedure inevitably trigger changes in all other stages, more or less. The point is that the accusatory elements received significant application in stages, which were basically inquisitorial. One of the many innovative solutions is reaching a verdict based on a settlement between the public prosecutor and the defendant. It is an emergency procedure with particularly pronounced accusatory elements and opportunism in addressing the public prosecutor, as being proceedings where the will of both parties is essential. The start of execution of these settlements requires stability of the country and a uniform penal policy. It is worth mentioning that during 2012, the analysis conducted on the existing penal policy in the Republic of Macedonia concluded that the policy is soft and that the verdicts range predominantly below the minimum prescribed by the Criminal Code or below the minimum specified penalty and the highest percentage of alternative measures imposed, including probation as the most common, whereby exists a huge discrepancy in the penalties imposed by appellate courts of different districts for the same crime69. In such circumstances it is impossible to consider that the settlement will revive, which seriously undermines the principle of equality of citizens. Therefore, it is necessary to have mechanisms for harmonizing the penal policy, that will enable smooth implementation of the new Code of Criminal Procedure (CCP), and the entire process of adjudication shall become far more impartial and even more transparent than hitherto. By doing so, voluntarism shall drop, unprincipled and biased judgment will decrease, and even the possibility of corrupt behaviour of the participants in criminal proceedings.
- Subjects
CRIMINAL justice policy; JUDICIAL reform
- Publication
Vizione, 2016, Vol 25, p99
- ISSN
1409-8962
- Publication type
Article