Criminal Law vs. Criminology: Concepts and Applications
Lesson 1: Concept of Criminal Law vs. Criminology
Criminal Law: A set of rules that regulate certain conduct as a crime by applying a legal consequence.
- Concept: A set of rules that regulate certain conduct as a crime by applying a legal consequence.
- Method: Abstract. Inductive method of science policy.
- Object of study: Crime. The crime is understood as the violation of a penal norm. The existence of the crime is valued in the Penal Code.
- Offenders: The only interest shown to the particular offender is the actual determination of the responsibility of the person.
- Purpose:
- The compensation of the harm caused by the crime.
- To prevent crime through the imposition or threat of a penalty. This is not as effective for those who have committed the crime.
Criminology: Empirical and interdisciplinary science that studies the crime, the offender, the victim, the social control, seeking an explanation and developing crime prevention and intervention strategies.
- Concept: Empirical and interdisciplinary science that studies the crime, the offender, the victim, the social control, seeking an explanation and developing crime prevention and intervention strategies.
- Method: Empirical. It is based on observation of reality. Study the specific criminal act and thereafter follows implications.
- Object of study: Interested in crime as a starting point. The difference is that criminology examines the circumstances surrounding the crime (before and after), i.e., the previous field.
- Offender: It is irrelevant. For many years has been the linchpin that has sought an explanation for the crime.
- Victim: Victimology is a science that studies the role of victims in criminal proceedings. There is always a selective process.
- Social Control: A series of mechanisms and sanctions through which occurs the socialization process of a person. It can be formal (school, laws, police) or informal (family, religion).
- Purpose:
- Prevention: Modern criminology focuses on prevention theories aside from the explanation of crime. Prevention is not only based on the use of capital punishment because it is managed another concept of prevention, with a sociological approach. This approach distinguishes between:
- Primary prevention: To draw attention to the root of the problem, avoid the cause of crime, removing the root of the problem (e.g., through education in schools).
- Secondary prevention: Deals with some factors determined when it is said that at a particular time and there is some criminal relevance (e.g., situational prevention).
- Tertiary prevention: Applied to persons who have committed a crime (e.g., programs to combat domestic violence).
- Effective Interventions in the criminal.
Ideally, real effective mechanisms be created based on criminology and then transferred to criminal law, what is known as a transmission belt. Let’s talk about crime policy, we do not refer to penal policy because it may be necessary to create only one Administrative Law.
Criminal Law and Procedure
Criminal Procedural Law is also called adjective. This is the set of rules that apply to criminal proceedings by which to determine the guilt of a subject and leading to the imposition of sentence (conviction or acquittal).
Adjective Criminal Law (or Criminal Procedure) also belongs to public law. When we refer to the Criminal Procedural Law, we are referring also to the rules that organize the criminal courts (Organic Law of Judicial Power).
In the case of criminal proceedings, you have to do is to check case by case, whether the conditions generic budgets of crime, through what is called the standard of proof (which can not be proved there.) Governed in this matter what we call the principle of legality, i.e., the process must be done according to what makes the law, you can not get a penalty out of the process, it must be done according to the Criminal Procedure Act Criminal.
Premium on private law what the parties want, they can reach a court agreement. In the Criminal Procedure Law must necessarily reach an agreement through the process. The Penal Code recognizes this need in Article 3.1. In the Criminal Procedure Act, Article 1, this is also collected.