Actual Issues on Judicial Practice in Criminal Proceedings in Respect of Cases Concerned with Corruption Related Crimes
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Abstract
A significant number of changes in Articles of the Criminal Code of Lithuania (hereinafter – C.C.) was made in the year 2011. Some important changes were made in chapter XXXIII of the C.C., providing criminal liability for crimes and misdemeanors against the civil service and the public interest. The essence of the above mentioned changes is the objective to reconcile the rules of the C.C. with the recommendations of European Union institutions report, as well as to ensure the effectiveness of the criminal law. Though the role of development, consideration and adoption of legal norm is a very important process, but the entry into force of the Law itself does not guarantee the effectiveness and proper functioning of the rules as well as regulation of social relations. Another very important stage – legal practice – is directly related to the implementation of justice and judicial practice, the consistency and quality of the content is becoming one of the main preconditions for the effectiveness of the application to the Criminal Law.
In this paper, the jurisprudence of Lithuanian courts in the field of corruption related crimes is analysed. If the dynamics of passive bribery (Article 225 of the C.C.) in comparison with active bribery (Article 227 of the C.C.) have been analysed during the last decade, it can be tracked that the number of recorded acts of active bribery has increased almost 10 times, while the number of recorded acts of passive bribery has increased about 2 times. There is no ground for a priori opinion that persons have become much more likely to bribe civil servants or persons equivalent thereto. The background for such dynamics could be changes in priorities of law enforcement institutions, etc. Such situation has inspired the overview of some problematic issues in jurisprudence of Lithuanian courts, which relates both to the practical challenges in application of criminal law (qualification of corruption-related offenses, evaluation of evidence and arguments, etc.) and the challenges of criminology (the preventive effect of reaction of state institutions to corruption, etc.).
In this paper, the jurisprudence of Lithuanian courts in the field of corruption related crimes is analysed. If the dynamics of passive bribery (Article 225 of the C.C.) in comparison with active bribery (Article 227 of the C.C.) have been analysed during the last decade, it can be tracked that the number of recorded acts of active bribery has increased almost 10 times, while the number of recorded acts of passive bribery has increased about 2 times. There is no ground for a priori opinion that persons have become much more likely to bribe civil servants or persons equivalent thereto. The background for such dynamics could be changes in priorities of law enforcement institutions, etc. Such situation has inspired the overview of some problematic issues in jurisprudence of Lithuanian courts, which relates both to the practical challenges in application of criminal law (qualification of corruption-related offenses, evaluation of evidence and arguments, etc.) and the challenges of criminology (the preventive effect of reaction of state institutions to corruption, etc.).
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Please see Copyright and Licence Agreement for further details.
