CRIMINAL POLICY OF THE COURTS FOR CRIMINAL OFFENSES OF VIOLENT PROPERTY CRIME

Božidar M. Banović

Žarko Braković

Abstract

Violent property crime are acts in which the social danger is very high, and therefore imply an adequate social response. The aim of this research was to examine the criminal policy and effectiveness of the courts in conducting criminal proceedings against adult perpetrators of theft, robbery and extortion. The study was designed as a cross-sectional study. The sample consisted of all decisions of the courts for the criminal offenses of theft, robbery and extortion in the territory of the Republic of Serbia, for which the proceedings were closed, from 2007 to 2012. The data were taken from the Statistical Office of the Republic and relate to the statistical survey of crime, by monitoring the accused and convicted persons for these crimes.

The results show the insufficient efficiency of the courts in conducting criminal proceedings and the wide disproportion between the penal policy of the legislator in the form of a suspended sentence and the criminal policy of the courts in the use of the prescribed criminal ranges. Imprisonment is the most pronounced criminal sanction, but its temporal distribution is questionable. A very large number of these penalties are below the legal minimum, which also calls into question the merits of the application of a sentence mitigation institute to this extent. Whether rightly or not, but it is indisputable, that priority is given to mitigating circumstances in sentencing. The research has shown that there is a disproportion between the criminal policy of the legislator, in the form of a punishment, and the criminal policy of the courts, when weighing and imposing sentences for these offenses. An effective approach to crime involves the effective detection of perpetrators, their effective prosecution and the enhancement of the criminal policy of courts within the statutory criminal ranges for these offenses.

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