The decree on the new penal code published on June 24 by the head of state is only good for the trash, according to the Professional Association of Magistrates (APM). Following an analytical work, the Association published this week an eight-page opinion in which it notes progress and weaknesses.
“The new penal code punishes certain new behaviors in society and new forms of deviance perpetrated through and with the help of New Information and Communication Technologies (NICT). The same is true of white-collar crime and illegal drug trafficking, “notes the association, which welcomes the authorities’ move to consolidate into the new penal code a set of criminal laws more or less applied recent but which were outside the current penal code. The APM cites as an example “laws on discrimination, violence against women, corruption and the financing of terrorism”.
As another advance obtained thanks to the new penal code, the judges mentioned the decriminalization of certain behaviors which raise today more deviance than delinquency. “This is the case with vagrancy and begging,” says the document, which noted, however, that the code punishes the exploitation of begging.
The choice to rewrite the penal code in a “simple” and “clear” style did not fail to attract the attention of members of the Professional Association of Magistrates. “The rewrite involves the wording of the legal statement to make it clearer and more precise. Certain offenses of the penal code of 1835, whose constituent elements are not sufficiently clearly identified, are the source of abusive interpretations and have often been the basis of attacks on individual freedoms … “, indicates the APM. Continue reading.