El recurso excesivo al derecho penal en España. Realidad y alternativas

Abstract

The Spanish penal system is strongly established on the principle of legality and comes from a codification tradition, based on the classical liberal criminal law, which could be classified as a procedural justice system. In recent years there is a tendency to carry out penal reforms very often and most of them have increased punitiveness by widening the categories of crimes, raising the penalties, and making the penitentiary system less flexible, especially for some criminal offences. The results of a recent thorough study of each stage of the Spanish penal system show that the model of law and order is displacing the procedural justice system. However, there are certain areas that seem to resist this punitive drift and show some optimism on the tendency to change the criminal policy model. This paper describes the current situation of the Spanish penal system and presents some examples of viable alternatives to the overuse of criminal law.