UNIT I INTRODUCTION TO CRIMINAL POLICY

Criminal Policy is considered as the study of the set of measures used by

government bodies to address the crime that affects a State, with the intention of
finding relevant solutions to reduce crime levels, respecting the State. of Law.

In Mexico, criminal law and the public servants in charge of forming, applying
and executing it, have been overwhelmed by the high levels of crime; Possibly due
to lack of attitude and aptitude, weakening of institutions, lack of vocation, or petty
interests of those in power. In the United Mexican States. It is essential to carry out
an in-depth study on the constituent elements of crime and criminal; as well as the
procedures in the formulation, application and execution of criminal legal norms.

1.1 Emergence of criminal policy

It is not possible to determine who first used the concept of Criminal Policy;
some authors believe it was Feuerbach or Henke, although Beccaría was the
starting point of this current in 1764 with his work "On Crimes and Penalties."
Criminal policy spread from Italy with Beccaria to England with Bentham, to France
with Berenger and Bonneville and to Germany with Feuerbach and Henke.

In 1889 Fran Von Liszt, Van Hamel and Adolfo Prins founded the
International Union of Criminal Law, but fundamentally Fran Von Liszt was the
mentor of the School of Criminal Policy or Pragmatic, Sociological and
Biosociology School and with this school politics began. systematic or scientific
criminal.

Fran Von Liszt differentiated Social Policy from Criminal Policy. The first had
as its objective the suppression or restriction of the social conditions and
phenomena of crime, while the second dealt with crime in particular and with the
punishment being adapted in its kind and measure to the offender, seeking to
prevent the commission of crimes. crimes in the future.

The core of Criminal Policy was the fight against crime but it should not be
restricted to the judicial area or Criminal Law but should be extended to the
preventive and repressive means of the State. The principles of Criminal Policy
were accepted by many codes and drafts, including in our Code prioritizing the
nature of the criminal's motives and the types of criminals: occasional, habitual and
predisposed with the consequent individualization of the penalty.

"Crime prevention" is more conducive when the structural causes that

generate insecurity are combated, through social programs that promote civic,
moral and cultural values that promote respect for legality and orderly and
harmonious social coexistence. Crime prevention programs must operate.

Reducing administrative corruption and public officials, as well as avoiding

and reducing abuse of power; Reducing the rate of hidden crime with greater
education and training of officials in charge of these purposes; Promoting programs
aimed at the primary or early detection of crime and providing basic vital
contributions, including housing conditions, work, health, education, justice, among
others.

The Criminal Forecast "is the statement of probability about the future legal
behavior of people."
Criminal Policy (Criteria)
Selective Action: Operation requires, among other criminal policy decisions, to
establish which criminal behaviors will be prosecuted until they are brought to oral
trial.
Rational Allocation of Functions: To achieve its full functionality, the system must
be made up of a prosecuting body (Public Ministry) oriented towards specialization
by types of crime, assisted by a Judicial Police that ensures the effective and
coordinated integration of the operators involved in the investigation.

Adequate Organization: The organizational design taken as a basis for

projecting the different services provided by the judicial system generally obeys a
standard pattern: the Court. From this model the entire organizational scheme of
the Judiciary was developed.
Sustained Management Control: The efficient and effective performance of the
Judicial Police through its investigations is, in reality, what gives effectiveness to
the criminal process. The Criminal Justice system or Penal System made up of the
Police, Criminal Justice, and Penitentiary Service Departments suffer from these
defects:

 Difference between measuring processes and measuring results

 Difference between measuring effectiveness and measuring

effectiveness or efficiency
  Need for broad impact measurements.

The prohibition of drugs on a global scale has been a resounding failure,

since far from achieving a world free of narcotics, it has adopted the emergence of
a business with exorbitant profits and that brings with it criminal violence never
seen before, such as that affecting Mexico. Criminal policy and the measures that
guarantee its consistency. The growth or emergence of human settlements and
population centers.
An act that corresponds to a criminal cause, through a relative or stranger.
Political and military evaluations were being carried out in order to respond to the
challenge also aimed at covering criminal investigations, not of a terrorist nature. In
criminal trials it is prohibited to impose, by simple analogy.

The sole purpose of political associations gave rise to the emergence of the
amparo trial for civil or criminal matters; for constitutional controversies; by actions
aware that the criminal policy of the extreme right also exists in the United States
of Mexico.

1.2 Different concepts of criminal policy

Criminal Policy is Politics:

1. Form of government
2. Public affairs management

Approach that is established from the public sphere to treat and confront
the criminal phenomenon. Crime is a political problem. It is a set of decisions,
criteria and arguments. Ex. We decided not to pursue drug use
According to Borja Jiménez. Criminal policy is defined as the set of
measures and criteria of a legal, social, educational, economic and similar
nature, established by public powers to prevent and react to the criminal
phenomenon, in order to keep the rates under tolerable limits. of crime in a
given society .

According to M. Ancel. It is the set of methods with which the social body
organizes responses to the criminal phenomenon .
 It is Criminal Policy to implement transversal lines in values to avoid
violence against women during the education of minors.
It is a criminal political decision to sell nicotine patches to avoid tobacco
consumption, which is not an illegal drug because it has been decided that it is not
an illegal drug (just like the sale of methadone or not, punishment with prison
sentences). prison sentences for certain behaviors, determination of police
protocols for the prosecution of certain crimes,....)

Criminal Policy are decisions from different areas to tackle a problem (more
or less he said this, but it has a rhythm...), a criminal phenomenon, but first we will
have to know that it is a criminal phenomenon, and it is more complex than what it
seems, to begin with, because it must define what a crime should be, how to
prosecute it, how to punish it, with what alternatives and regime of execution.

1.2.1 Historical concept.

Any definition that is taken as a reference of Criminal Policy, starts from a

premise, must be understood fundamentally as policy of the State and therefore of
the dominant groups, which is why it is always ideologized and represents the
interests and points of view of the hegemonic forces without Therefore, it is no
longer closely linked to the historical development of Law, to the scientific content
of legal matters and other disciplines such as criminology, philosophy of law or
criminal sociology.

Franz Von Listz : who dealt with Criminal Policy by pointing out the finalist
condition that Criminal Law must have that links it with Criminal Policy, a
manifestation that becomes relevant as an important part of a movement of
criticism and spirit of reform of current law. .

Günter Kaiser: "Understood as a science, Criminal Policy aims at the

systematic and orderly exposition of the strategies, tactics and means of social
sanction to achieve optimal control of crime.

Heinz Zip. Criminal Policy already plans, from its very name, the generic
problem of determining coordination with the field of Law and with that of Politics.

Merle. French criminalist, Criminal Policy consists of discovering and

rationally organizing the many possible solutions with the various underlying
problems and forms that the criminal phenomenon has.

Mac Ancel. Criminal Policy really means all the efforts and circumstances to
create a methodical and systematic crime control system.
 Bernat de Celes explains: By Criminal Policy we must understand the policy
pursued by the government of a country with regard to:

1) The application of criminal law

2) The review of criminal law
3) Crime prevention
4) The administration of criminal justice (including the police)
5) Treatment of the offender.

1.2.2 Doctrinal concept.

In the doctrine there is no unanimous agreement regarding who first used

the term criminal policy. A large sector of the doctrine attributes the genesis of the
term to Feuerbach, since in 1801 he expressed that Kriminalpolitik, in his
understanding, was the legislative wisdom of the State . Initiating in this way a
scientific study of state policies to reduce crime.

Another sector of the doctrine attributes the term to Von Liszt who, in his
famous Marburg Program (1888), stated: “let us appeal to a new science - which
can be called Criminal Policy - which investigates in a scientific way the causes of
crimes. crimes (taking advantage of the rich materials and the excellent means of
knowledge that Anthropology and Statistics provide today), observe the effects of
punishment (to check whether it achieves in fact its objectives) and undertake an
active fight against crime, using of weapons appropriate to the object pursued;
weapons that may consist of both useful penalties and other means related to them
(security measures).”

A minority of authors, such as Langle and Saldaña, believe that the person
who first used the term Criminal Policy was Kleinsrod, who in the Prologue to the
Additions to Von Liszt's Treatise (1793) established the term Criminal Law Policy in
that book ( Polítik des Criminalrechts ), as it was initially defined and which later
evolved and became Kriminalpolitik .

To achieve success in the existing relationships between criminal

policy, criminology and dogmatics: disciplines that inevitably go hand in hand in
any study of this nature, criminal policy has been used since the beginning of the
18th century and is commonly understood as the state policy to fight crime.

Criminal policy is not a science, but a scientific approach can be made to it,
through the different disciplines that are connected to it, such as sociology,
statesmanship or anthropology.
 Criminal policy is a sector of politicians that develop in a society
predominantly from the state. It refers to the use that the State will make of penal
power. Criminal policy is, in short, the set of decisions, instruments and rules that
guide the exercise of state violence.

Another terminological conception of criminal policy that is important to note

is what is considered to be the state policy of social control and conflict resolution
directed towards human actions considered most violent and conflictive in a given
country in times of peace. Criminal policy is the prevention of crime, because the
requirement of every society is to live in an environment of security.

Fernando Cotora , points out that criminal policy is a policy that is applied to a
social conflict in which rights that have the most extreme legal protection are
violated. Criminal policy goes far beyond these considerations. It involves other
types of responses, which the author calls extra-penal or extra-punitive.

It must be attention to the real factors that facilitate the increase in crime, we
must understand the existence of various types of crime prevention, specifically,
three types of prevention are known:
Primary: aimed at reducing the incidence of new cases.
Secondary: early identification of cases in the pre-criminal stage.
Tertiary: aimed at treating cases.

The science that studies criminal policy and crime prevention is criminology.
Criminology is a relatively young science. Since antiquity and the Middle Ages,
greater importance has been given to the fight against crime and scientists'
concern about it has increased noticeably.

Criminal policy must become a reality sector from which social needs are
taken up, generally called criminological studies, with this it is necessary to take for
granted the importance of this science in the application of criminal policy. It is one
more of social policies. This call for other social policies.

1.2.3 CONCEPT FROM THE APPROACH OF THE NATIONAL

DEVELOPMENT PLAN.

The first axis of this National Development Plan refers to the rule of law and
security. A fundamental premise of social interaction is that people need security
guarantees for their Sustainable Human Development.
 Public security and the rule of law form an essential binomial to make
Sustainable Human Development a reality. The Government must be able to
objectively and impartially sanction those who do not respect the provisions
contained in the law, in order to guarantee the safety of all Mexicans.

Only in a social order of such characteristics will the freedom and

responsibility of all find themselves increasingly linked, supporting each other. Only
in this way will the physical integrity and assets of families be respected, as well as
the free movement of people, goods, services and capital.

1.3 CONTRIBUTION OF CRIMINOLOGY TO CRIMINAL POLICY.

Comparative criminology demands from criminal policy respectful attention to

the complex reality of the third world. Logically, it must overcome the old elitist
legal comparison and even the current sociological comparison to reach the
egalitarian personal one. The attention will provide radically different perspectives
and conceptions from the traditional ones about criminology in general and its
fundamental notions in particular: crime, factors, unemployment, terrorism, strikes.
etc

Criminology, due to its multidisciplinary characteristic, almost always has an

adjective that explains its most substantive feature. Today's criminology surpasses
many facets of traditional legal criminology; It adopts a sociological approach,
since it relies on society more than on law and does not reside in the legal faculties
but in the social sciences.

Developing countries are achieving recognition that their criminology must be

indigenous and evolve as such. Some Latin American countries and developing
countries on other continents are trying to develop their own criminology to
regulate their coexistence.

The solutions that today's sociological criminology brings to criminal policy do

not satisfy. The criminology of tomorrow will surpass the criminology of yesterday
and today, especially in the two facets to which we are referring. It will not be legal
or sociological but, so to speak, community criminology, in other words, personal
criminology. It will be the criminology of man and the sciences of man.

This criminology of the future encourages comparative studies, without

borders and without preferences, more fruitful than those carried out until now.
Tomorrow's comparative criminology will realize that developed countries are not
enough but also need the contribution of third world criminology. The diverse and,
in a certain sense, opposing contemporary criminologies must not disappear but
rather enrich each other for the benefit of the truth.

Criminal policy must collaborate in the programming of a process of global

structural change that seeks equality of social, economic and cultural opportunities
both at the national and international levels, without pretending that this evolution
follows the trajectories outlined by the countries. already developed.

1.4 Analysis of social conflict.

A generally accepted definition of conflict in the sociological sense is that

offered by Lewis A. Sewing for whom is a struggle for values and for status, power
and scarce resources, in the course of which opponents wish to neutralize, harm or
eliminate their rivals. A social conflict will be when it transcends the individual and
comes from the structure of society itself. For Ralf Dahrendorf, conflict is a
universal and necessary social fact that is resolved in social change. Dahrendorf's
position can be traced to Hobbes.

The science that studies criminal policy and crime prevention is criminology.
This science encompasses and surpasses the study of criminal law, criminal
procedural law and penitentiary law. This does not imply, in any way, that
criminology can dispense, in its analysis , with the limits imposed on the action of
the State by the principles that guarantee human rights , but that it must always
take them into account (like any discipline). social) in relation to everything that
involves actions of intervention by the State on individuals.

Studies that highlight criminology are called criminal or preventive political

studies and are generally called criminological studies. We consider criminology as
a science framed within the sociological context and therefore not dependent on
any normative discipline, although criminological problems most of the time
concern facts or situations defined as a crime by criminal law.