Retributive justice - cause or effect of criminality

摘要

Retributive justice is an important part of justice and is based on the principle that an important step towards achieving justice is to establish the guilt of those who violate legal norms and implicitly to apply to them sanctions that are proportionate to the gravity of the offense(s) committed by them, and to the losses suffered by the victim and community. Therefore, an unlawful act can be defined as a breaking of the social and judicial norms, directed towards an individual, or against property and, therefore, against the state, the latter being the only one who is entitled to apply sanctions. In order to prevent and avoid violent and inadequate forms of punishment against an individual who has committed an offense, the penalty should only be the one established by law, and it has to be public and expeditious and its lowest limitations have to be applied for the committed offences. It is more and more desirable and recommended that the nature of retributive punishment is replaced with punishment that provides social utility with the specific purpose that the penalty imposed should be the general prevention that can be achieved by the force of example and special pre-emption, as a deterrent effect achieved by punishment.