PENAL POLICY IN SERBIA

Financing agency: Royal Netherlands Embassy in Belgrade

Leader:Aleksandar Resanović

Project goals were to determine the following: 1. to type of penal policy of courts in Serbia, i.e. how close it is to legal minimum or maximum; 2. to find if the courts’ penal policy is coordinated, i.e. are all citizens in different places in Serbia equal before the law; 3. to identify the way and measure of harmonizing future penal policy of the Special Court for Organised Crime to the penal policy of courts for «classical» i.e. «conventional» crime, and 4. to identify if it is necessary to change penal legislation and if it is - to what extent. Also, broader objective of the project was to determine whether and how much the penal policy of courts in Serbia is adjusted to different European standards.
Realized project activities were: 1) researching penal policy due to 5 diferent criminal acts (1. Murder, from the group Crimes against life and limb; 2. Strong theft, from the group Crimes against property; 3. Rape, from the group of sex delicts; 4. Strong crimes against official duty, from the group Crimes against official duty – corruption, and 5. Strong crimes against traffic safety, from the group Crimes against traffic safety), all in 12 biggest district courts in Serbia; 2) describing results of researching and publishing the book “Penal policy of courts in Serbia”; 3) discussing it at the Round table that was held on November 27, 2006, and 4) presenting Round table discussion and conclusions to all project beneficiars and targets.