О СУШТИНИ МЕРА БЕЗБЕДНОСТИ У ЈУГОСЛОВЕНСКОМ КРИВИЧНОМ ПРАВУ
THE ESSENCE OF SECURITУ MEASURES IN YUGOSLAV CRIMINAL LAW

Summary/Abstract: It has become usual in Yugoslav theory of criminal law to apply tiie term of security measures, while there was no single attempt at defining its nature. Such an effort would not be motivated by some reasons for the sake of theory only. It has been said, namely, that a struggle for a term is the one for specific criminal-political basic principle. The author analyzes some criminal sanctons which are classified in Yugoslav criminal law under the title „security measures", which brings him to an astonishing conclusion, at least at first sight, namely that security measures do not in fact exist in the Criminal Law of the SFR of Yugoslavia. Yugoslav law-maker, while not accepting the security measures which mean depriving of liberty of the responsible perpetrator, has opted against this kind of criminal sanctions. While endeavouring to conceal and diguise the rise of repression, the law-maker has applied the technique of renaming. This move has, however, missed: the repressive character of the existing „security measures" could not remain hidden. This was noted even by those who usually do not question the character of these sanctions as security measures. The author considers that the law-maker has lost the opportunity to make more flexible the penal apparatus even by means of unpopular extension, which would better suit the struggle against rather diverse criminality. In other words, while relating the pronouncing of „security measu res" in most cases to the sentence imposed, the law-maker has degraded them (probably not intentionally) to second-rate sanctions. The author proposes de lege ferenda. another approach: to recognize to them penal character and to make them equal to the existing penalties, which would make possible their independent implementation. Not, in other words, together with the penalty, but instead of it. Such a reform (together with similar reappraisal of the apparatus of so-called legal consequences of the sentence), would mean a great step forward in the genuine up-dating of Yugoslav criminal law. This would be better than perpetual cosmetic interventions which do not change the substance of matters, while creating for the non-informed ones the impression that we are a rather dynamic society which constantly endeavours to reassess all segments of its order, including the criminal law. Such a development — which in fact is not a development, is a result of a process termed by the author „the alchemy of power". According to him, that which has always been a penalty can not change it nature overnight only because the law-maker wanted it.

• Details
• Contents