2. Spanish criminal justice system

• The Spanish dictatorship ended in 1975-1977, this means that Spain is in the 3rd wave of democratisation process. The Spanish State has 2 main characteristics:

  • The length of the dictatorial period (from 1939 to 1977)
  • Democratic transition shaped by the dictatorial elites and the army, instead of by a popular uprising
• THE SPANISH CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM

  • Low crime rates (lower than other EU countries) 
  • High prison population rates (higher than other EU countries)
• The punitiveness of the criminal justice system is the result of the complex interplay of these 3 elements:

  1. Legal reforms
  2. Institutional practices
  3. Collective perceptions and expectations
• Legal reforms

  The Spanish Parliament passed legal reforms to democratise the authoritarian Penal Code:

  • 1979 Penitentary Act (legal basis for the construction of a prision regime)
  • Organic Law 8/1983 (general rules of a rights-based model of penal liability)
  • Organic Law 9/1985 (decriminalised abortion)
  • Organic Law 3/1989 (fostered a feminist agenda in relation to sex crime and domestic violence)
• The Penal Code of 1995 was more severe than the previous one (1944-1973 PC). It included property or drug-related crimes and an abrogation of early release through prison work (redención de penas por el trabajo).  As a result, the harshness of the 1995 PC sustained the growth of prison population during the 2000s. It’s also relevant the popular pressure from the 1990s onwards to abrogate parole and raise the maximum term of prision sentence.
• Institutional practices

  There’s a lack of accountability in how the police operates (deficient democratic reform of Spanish police):

  • Police brutality and ill-treatment
  • Employment of rubber bullets (lethal) by riot police
  • Impunity of police officers (pardoned by the Spanish government)

  The judiciary system and its conservative trend has limited sensitivity to a rights-based criminal justice (ex: 40 years max. term)
• Collective perceptions and expectations

  2 historical facts clarify the key role played by the Spanish criminal justice system in the management of collective anxieties and perceptions of social disorder:

  • 1975- 1990s: Criminalisation of heroin addicts (Spain had the highest rate of heroin addicts in the Western World)
  • 1999-2009s: Criminalisation of migrant newcomers (Spain had one of the highest rates of immigration in EU)
• The legal reforms, institutional practices and collective expectations on top of the bridge and gap between the dictatorship and democracy… are characteristics of the Spanish mode of punishment as a distinct expression of post-dictatorial penality.