Introduction to Criminal Law: Concepts, Functions, and Principles
THEMATIC UNIT 1 – INTRODUCTION
Lesson 1: Basic Concepts of Criminal Law
1. Criminal Law and Social Control: Concept and Forms
Criminal Law: The branch of legislation that regulates the state’s power to punish, determining what is punishable (disvalued behavior) and its consequences.
Legal Consequences for Committing a Crime
- Tier System: The penalty is the only consequence of repression for the commission of a crime.
- Tier System: Incorporates security measures.
- Some authors support a third way: the repair of damage to replace the death penalty or attenuate its complement when it contributes to satisfying the ends of sentences and the needs of the victim.
Meanings of the Term “Criminal Law”
- Dogmatic Science or Criminal Justice: The discipline that deals with the interpretation, organization, and development of legal and scientific opinions in criminal law.
- Subjective Sense: Refers to the state’s power to punish (the right to punish).
- Objective Sense: The set of rules of positive law governing punitive power to protect human relationships in the community and mentor the most valuable legal rights.
Social Control
It is a basic condition of social life through which every community ensures the rules and behavioral expectations of its members, needed to continue to exist as such. At the same time, it limits the freedom of man and leads to their socialization as an integral group.
Covers: collective norms, social sanctions, and control processes that pressure behavior.
Forms of Social Control
- Informal: Social customs or practices, the media, etc.
- Formal: Legal rules in general, criminal rules in particular.
The penal system, as a means of highly formalized legal control, comprises:
- Standards: Defining deviant behavior as criminal.
- Penalties: The reactions generated by these behaviors.
- Procedure and Institutional Apparatus: For its implementation.
2. Functions of Criminal Law
They relate to the model state to which it belongs, and it relates to the function and purpose of punishment. Regarding the latter, there are:
- Absolute Theories: The role of criminal law is merely retributive, so the sentence is an end in itself, a bad tax to achieve justice.
- Theories Concerning: The penalty has a preventive purpose, preventing future criminal acts. Prevention can be general (to society to create fear) or special (addressed to the offender, for example, creating reintegration).
- Mixed Theories: The essence of punishment is retributive, but it should aim for preventive purposes.
State Models
- Theocratic State: Identifies with the concept of retributive punishment, which finds its legitimacy in divine justice.
- Absolutist State: Prevention is identified with an unlimited general saying, the state as an end in itself.
- Classic Liberal State: The penalty is an instrument of repressive state power.
- Social Status: The mission of criminal law is the protection of society against crime and the fight against crime by incorporating special presence as instruments of security measures.
- Democratic State: Composed of three functions:
- Protection of Legal Interests and Motivation: Protection of legal goods (goods that facilitate the participation of people in society) by preventing limited citizens’ motivation to avoid offending, showing in advance the improper conduct.
- Enforcing Ethical and Social Values: The criminal law system should be directed to teleological purposes, guiding values, and political criminal nature.
- Supervision of the Enforcement of the Rule: Through the pain used to exercise public confidence toward the norm, to have fidelity to the law and accept the consequences of the infringement of its precepts.
3. Anthropological Bases
Criminal law, to be a tool to recognize man as he is, provides a daily understanding and historical and cultural dynamics of man because the legal order is modified according to the changes experienced by man.
Criminal Law is understood teleologically, founded in the anthropological, and therefore, it is recognized as a minimum:
- Be an order regulating human behaviors.
- Let there be no contradiction between their devalued human behavior.
- Regular features you do not intend to ignore the laws of the physical world.
- Recognize the self of man.
The Fundamental Principles of Penal Control Regulators
The fundamental concepts of criminal law are the crime, which is the kind of illegality that connects to the reactions, and the punishment and security measures, which are the legal consequences that characterize criminal law.
4. Concepts of Criminal Law
In Fact
Binds the definition of crime to the commission of a fact, leaving aside the author’s personal characteristics that are only relevant when considering the judicial individualization of punishment. The offense injures or endangers protected rights.
Copyright
Binds the definition of crime to the dangerous character of its author.
Guilty
For a human being to be criticized for their behavior, they must have the choice of self-determination.
Hazard
Man only acts motivated by causes that determine him; therefore, it is not possible to distinguish human behavior from other facts of nature.
Liberal
Represents a system of legal certainty against the offense and also plays a role in ensuring the rights of citizens against the rulers.
Authoritarian
Its object is the duty of citizens to the state.
Our criminal law is, in fact, guilty and liberal.