Дефицитът на научни изследвания и отражението му върху правоприлагането и наказателната политика

Abstract

The report presents the results of a research on the effects of the 2004 amendments in the Juvenile Delinquency Act on the jurisprudence of the national courts competent to place minors and adolescents of the age between 8 and 18 in correctional institutions – social-pedagogical boarding schools and correctional boarding schools. Field research was carried out in July 2009 which examined the judgments on cases of placement of minors and adolescents in the social-pedagogical boarding school in the village of Lik and the correctional boarding school in the city of Rakitovo. The minors and adolescents placed there represent more than one fourth of all children living in such institutions for the same period in 2009. In addition, some other 54 judgments pronounced in the period of 2005-2010 by the district courts around the country have been examined. The analysis aimed at establishing the extent to which the guarantees for protection of minors’ and adolescents’ rights have been strengthened after the introduction of a court procedure for placement in correctional institutions. The conclusions from the conducted research are that the judgments themselves do not allow to form an objective opinion about the extent to which the legislative amendments have created better guarantees in practice for effective protection of minors’ and adolescents’ rights during the holding of court hearings, even when a lawyer or a trusted representative have been ensured. Moreover, the courts lack an objective criterion on how to choose between placement in social-pedagogical boarding schools and in correctional boarding schools, which results in placement in one and the same institution of children having committed acts with different level of severity.