Legal-historical overview of the introduction of suspended sentence in Serbian law

Abstract

The paper analyzes the issue of introducing a suspended sentence into Serbian law. Suspended sentencing, as a modern institution of the sociological school and the embodiment of a changed penal philosophy, experienced its expansion in European legislation at the end of the 19th century. However, suspended sentences were applied in Serbia only on the basis of the Yugoslav Criminal Code from 1929. But, this did not mean that the idea of legal regulation of suspended sentence, on the territory of Serbia, only appeared in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. Moreover, the idea of legal regulation of suspended sentence was put forward in other, developed European countries at the end of the 19th century, but it did not attract the attention of lawyers in the Kingdom of Serbia at that time. The first attempts to prescribe a suspended sentence in the Kingdom of Serbia occurred at the beginning of the 20th century, but due to the outbreak of the Wars, all of this remained a dead letter, never having been enacted into law. Therefore, the paper presents the reasons that motivated lawyers in the Kingdom of Serbia and the Kingdom of Yugoslavia to raise the issue of the introduction of suspended sentences, as well as the difficulties they encountered both during its introduction and during its practical application.

Keywords

• suspended sentence
• sociological school
• unification
• penal philosophy