Delitos y contravenciones como factores de criminalidad y de perturbación de la convivencia social

Abstract

The main purpose of this issue on “OFFENSES AND CONTRAVENTIONS AS FACTORS FOR CRIMINALITY AND PERTURBANCE OF SOCIAL CO-EXISTANCE,” is to show that “police contravention” is not a punishable conduct; its commission does not constitute penal or contravention-like background, nor is it a factor of criminality in Colombia; yet it does constitute disturbance of social co-existence. And some form of punishment must be applied to it different from the penal one, at the moment it is to be applied.

Punishable behaviors have always been classified as offenses and contraventions, but in spite of the fact that it is known in the history of penal law, the doctrine of police-related crime, it has never been explicitly asserted that a police-related contravention is some sort of punishable behavior, reproachable under the substantive penal dogma; but that certain types of offenses, because of their low social impact, are known to the police authorities, through a special procedure and not by the judges of the republic.

The police-related crime step by step has been giving way to penal contravention, and presently the latter has not only regained its dogmatic concept, but it has also become its natural judge, without the police authorities’ –through constitutional mandate (art. 29 and 116 of the Penal Code)—being able to impose penalties that imply deprivation of liberty nor formal accusations nor judged crimes, but only to know and to castigate police-related contraventions and impose non penal sanctions when the case may be.

The penalty and the penal norm are instruments of penal law to fight delinquency and criminality within the boundaries of the social and democratic State of law. On the contrary, the non-penal sanctions and administrative coactions applied to police-related contraventions without their being a factor of criminality are instruments of the law for the police to fight facts perturbing social co-existence; and they are protected both by penal law as well as by the right of the police, mainly to meet the duties of the police.