50 years of Criminal Justice

A criminal penalty is a measure of state coercion, applied on behalf of the state for a court to the person who committed a crime, and it is provided by criminal law limiting the rights and freedoms of the convicted.

As a fact, punishment in criminal law measures the impact of the state applicable to the person who committed the crime. Punishment, therefore, is a kind of social consequence of crime. In legal terms the punishment serves as a basic form of the implementation of criminal responsibility. State’s right to punish derives from the problem of security people living together in society, maintaining intact the “legal system of social life.”Â Currently, penalties are usually applied only to the court and the only statutory procedural order.

History and world literature knows many forms of punishment. Some of them have appeared in ancient times and are applied to the present day, while others are virtually gone down in history. Composition and nature of the punishment system is directly dependent on the social, economic and political conditions that are prevailing in a particular society, reflects the level of morality, culture and civilization of the society.

There are several approaches to the consideration of punishment used in criminal law. The first of these involves a simple grouping, creating a list of all penalties, usually located in a particular order. The second involves the consideration of punishment as a form a special system that has features not inherent to the aggregate of all forms of punishment. This approach requires a multiplicity of punishment based on the classification, identification of the internal interactions between its individual species. Punishment can be classified according to different bases. In order of appointment: major penalties that can be used by themselves or used to enhance the effect of other forms of punishment. And additional penalties are not applied independently and are only used to enhance the effect of other forms of punishment. Penalties can be used as a major, and as an extra.

Depending on how individuals may be appointed:
General – can be assigned to all persons who committed the crime. Special – can be assigned only to certain categories of persons (for example, soldiers).

Depending on the content restrictions of the rights and freedoms, there can be economic penalties. Penalties involve deprivation or restriction of freedom. Penalties include mandatory involvement of the workforce. Penalties may be appointed for a fixed term or without a time limit.

In the process of execution of punishments one punishment may be replaced by another (usually more lenient – as a result of the positive behavior of the convicted person). If the penalty imposed for a specified period it does not always require the departure of the penalty in full, the legislation of most countries provides early termination of the sentence under certain conditions.

The changes that are expected in the field of criminal justice over the next 50 years include online preventive measures, implementing of the newest technologies and more tight cooperation between the countries, using the common database to analyze the criminal activities all over the world. Implementing new technologies in this sphere is necessary, as the criminals also have advanced technologies. That is why it is essential to be competitive with them and to be superior than they are. These changes will be beneficial for the society, as there will be many advantages when implementing these changes, although there will be spent a lot of money on the new technologies.