Juvenile prison: Remarks on the specific characteristics of regular sentencing

Abstract

The system of the juvenile criminal law in the Republic of Serbia includes different mechanisms of social response to juvenile delinquency, including corrective orders, corrective measures and juvenile prison. This paper deals with the issue of determining a relevant sentence for juvenile offenders in trial proceedings. The legislator has provided a number of guidelines for these proceedings: the specific range of the juvenile prison sentence, the purpose of punishment, the degree of maturity of a juvenile offender, the time needed for his/her educational and vocational training, and all relevant circumstances envisaged in Article 54 of the Criminal Code. The previous statement reveals the focal points of examination and structural organization in this article, whose purpose is twofold: first, to explain the effect of the subject-specific legal provisions (aggravating and mitigating circumstances) envisaged in the Act on Juvenile Criminal Offenders and Protection of Juveniles in Criminal Law and, second, to establish how the general provisions from the Criminal Code are applied in this case, with special emphasis on their specific manifestations.

Keywords

• juvenile prison
• purpose of punishment
• aggravating and mitigating circumstances