Alternative Measures in Macedonia

Alternative measures represent modern reforms to penal sanctions.With legislative changes of 2004 the Macedonian Penal Code has provided alternative measures as types of criminal sanctions.Based on the practice of other states and their effect in practice, this legislation has seen it appropriate to its provisions to foresee these types of alternative measures:the conditional sentence,conditional sentence with protective supervision order, conditional termination of criminal proceedings,community Service Work, judicial remark, jail house. Untill recently, is mostly imposed prison sentence for almost all types of offenses.Convicted persons have problems and difficulties encountered during the punishment due to not deviding the type of crime, social risk, their repetition and many other features. As a result it has come to the prison overcrowding that has not only presented a serious problem for the inmates but also for the country itself, because these have led to great expense to its budget.These problems among others have also brought inefficiency of the purpose of punishment in general, and that is the rehabilitation and improvement of the criminal perpetrator in the future not be the perpetrator of the offenses again.The reason of the inclusion of alternative measures has been needed. Earlier in the Penal Code of Republic of Macedonia have been foreseen only a suspended sentence and judicial admonition but with the 2004 legislative changes are also envisaged other types of alternative sentencing. Their goal is to make it easier for the perpetrators offense so that it is not pronounced the punishment of imprisonment.Also a very important factor is that the offenses for which these measures or alternative sanctions are not high risk offenses, and therefore the purpose of punishment will be achieved through the warning, threat or other measures to provide assistance and supervision of the conduct of the perpetrators of criminal acts.The imposition and their application will benefit not only those convicted but also the whole society, because not only will result in the reduction of the level of criminality, but also will increase their awareness in future not repeat offenses of the same or different.When imposing alternative measures determined by the court appointed time during which the offender must respect and implement the obligations, so the main objection is that in the future so that it is not pronounced the perform other offenses.During this stage in which the offender will be supervised is called probation phase.This probation phase also provides protection for society because in most cases the perpetrators who have been in the stage of testing have deviated committing new criminal offenses.