The penal code brings together the punitive legal norms of a country.
The penal code is a systematized block of unitary characteristics where the punitive legal norms of a nation appear. It covers, therefore, the laws that are applicable from a criminal point of view. In this sense, the penal code reflects the ius puniendi (the sanctioning power) of the State.
Every penal code includes, for example, custodial sentences that exist for anyone who commits a crime. When we talk about crime we are referring to everything from homicides to abuse, influence peddling, embezzlement or theft, including injuries or slander.
a set of rules
It should be noted that, in the field of law, a code is defined as the group of systematic legal rules that serve to regulate, in a unitary manner, a certain matter. This definition allows the systematic compilation of various laws and the set of regulations linked to a certain subject to be known as a code.
The civil code , to cite a specific expression, describes the ordered, systematized and unitary group of private law rules that govern the civil relations of both natural and legal persons, whether private or public (as long as the people act as individuals). . The commercial code , for its part, is the set of rules and precepts created to regulate commercial relations.
The criminal code includes custodial sentences.
The Penal Code of Spain
If we focus on what the Spanish Penal Code is, we can establish that the maximum prison sentences established, for example, for sexual offenders are fifteen years, while for those who have carried out a homicide they exceed in many cases. eighteen years old. In order for the sentence to establish that he remains in prison for more than those eighteen years in the latter case, there must be aggravating factors such as cruelty or treachery .
In this sense, along with homicides, the crimes that lead those who have committed them to spend more time deprived of liberty are genocide (acts carried out to eliminate a racial, ethnic or religious group), terrorism and assassination (murder or manslaughter of an important person).
Continuing with the example of Spain, whose current penal code was approved in 1995 by organic law ( Organic Law 10/1995 ), it can be determined that the crimes that have lower maximum sentences are the following: sexual harassment that may not even reach to one year in prison , the prevarication that follows the trend of the previous case cited or the peddling of influences that, at most, reaches two years in prison .
France, the pioneer country
As in the case of the civil code and the commercial code, France was the pioneer country in terms of the penal code.
During the government of Napoleon Bonaparte, the first modern penal code was promulgated with the aim of structuring the legal system and avoiding contradictions between the various dispersed regulations that governed the French penal system.
The importance of the penal code
The existence of a penal code means that citizens can know which acts are classified as crimes and, in this way, avoid them. On the other hand, the penal code guarantees that a person will not be punished for an act that is not prohibited by law.
In any case, it is important to keep in mind that not all criminal legislation is usually included in the criminal code , but there are also special criminal laws and non-criminal laws but with criminal content.