Criminal punishment, economic crisis and criminality - interferences

The permanent reassessment of penal institutions is a necessity determined by the constant evolution of society. World states are entitled and at the same time obliged to permanently examine social realities and, whenever any social dysfunctions are noticed, must intervene to guide the destiny of their citizens towards a normality which entails a minimum level of satisfaction for all their members. Under this impulse, the legal systems of each state and the specific areas of law may undergo important changes and additions under pressure from socio-economic, cultural, religious and political realities. Consequently, each legal norm is distilled and shaped both in terms of its hypothesis and in terms of the disposition and sanction. One may note that compliance with the disposition of a legal norm is supported by the sanction. Among statutory sanctions, criminal punishment occupies a special place. It is the means deemed appropriate by the legislating body to sanction violations of values protected by the criminal law. In this sense, criminal doctrine aims to incorporate in the norm pertaining to a particular offense both the notion of protection and that of repression. Accordingly, it has been argued that "in drawing up sanctioning dispositions, the focus is always on the interest that is protected and on the evil against which the protection is instituted; the sanctioning norm is underpinned by these two notions. As such, in each sanctioning disposition we may distinguish a mix of the two concepts, which encapsulates the idea of justice." [2] Yet to what extent the two terms of the concept of offence can be reconciled in order to offer satisfaction to the injured party and ensure that the sentence of the offender is proportionate.