The effect of legislative changes in the matter of crimes against sexual freedom and integrity on the consequences of the criminal liability of minors

Abstract

The legislative changes in the matter of the sanctions provided by law for crimes against sexual freedom and integrity bring into question, given the way in which the sanctions were legally individualized (providing, for example, only the application of educational measures or only the application of punishments for crimes having as an active subject a juvenile) the question of whether there has been a genuine change in the sanctioning regime for juvenile delinquency or if there are issues that, through the interpretation of the legal texts, lead to the maintenance of the current sanctioning system.

Precisely the educational measure, in opposition to the way in which the educational measures are legally individualized, namely by reference to the limits of the punishment provided by law, represents the atypical situation through which controversies are opened regarding the way of sanctioning other participants to the commission of the crime (subjects who have exceeded the age of the minor), regarding the observance of equality before the law (between juvenile subjects and adult subjects of the crime), or regarding the legislative coherence in the hierarchy of sanctions or regarding the result of the interpretation of the legal texts that, in some situations leads to the emergence of a genuine cause of non-punishment of some of the participants (accomplices who turned 18 years old on the date of the crime).