The PGR makes 11 observations to the Penal Code

Eleven points contained in the Dominican Penal Code have been identified by the Attorney General of the Republic, Mirian German Brito, so that the senators, after the approval of the piece by the deputies, submit them for study and modification.

Germán Brito’s request was made to the president of the Senate, Eduardo Estrella, through a communication.

“We are aware that this initiative is one of the most transcendental of those that should be known in the Dominican Republic at this time,” says a fragment of the contents of the letter to Estrella.

It adds that, from the Public Prosecutor’s Office “we are willing to collaborate with the legislative chambers in this important task, which will benefit the Dominican Republic and the institutions of the justice system”. Germán Brito recommends that the tripartite classification of offenses be eliminated, and proposes that, in its place, the general denomination of crime or punishable conduct be used for all typical, anti-juridical and guilty actions, as it is a legal trend more in accordance with the new times in international substantive criminal law.

“Likewise,” she argues, “this denomination would be more in accordance with the general part of the present code proposal, since with it we have made a turn towards German criminal law, moving away from the French tradition where this division of the conduct into levels of affectation or depending on the nature of the protected legal good is more appropriate”.

The magistrate affirms that the rationality of maintaining as punishable conducts, in criminal court, the contraventions, “when the modern legal tendency is to decriminalize them and let them be sanctioned by the administrative sanctioning law, especially when in the current proposal they are not sanctioned with custodial sentences”, must also be considered.

When referring to the attempt, he says that modern legal tendencies punish them according to the punishable conducts, not the type of infraction. “In that sense, we submit to the debate Why not punish in all cases the punishable conducts in the attempts?”, suggests the magistrate.

“The organization of the infractions within the sections that correspond to them as, for example, the embezzlement of funds that is not located in the subsection of embezzlement or embezzlement; the “bullying”, which is erroneously included within the section of sexual aggressions”, she recommends, as a modification.

It points out the need to reconcile the description of the infraction of sexual aggression foreseen in articles 132 as a basic type and 139 as an aggravating circumstance.

It also states the need to maintain in the draft the concept of violence against women, as a criminal offense differentiated from gender violence.

Regarding the offenses against public administration, he says that the descriptions, the typical conducts must be revised for the purpose of using the correct terminology and a more precise description of the typical conducts.

“For example, in the wording of the offense of extortion, the term ‘fraud’ is used at the time of specifying the typical conduct for the purpose of determining the applicable fine, when the correct term would be ‘distraction’. Fraud is an autonomous legal concept, something that concerns us is that this term is frequently used in the drafting of the code as a synonym of “infraction”, a situation that can generate confusion”, she clarifies.

Miriam Germán clarifies that in the Criminal Code, the offense of passive influence peddling, the description of the type is very closed and leaves out the conduct of the agent who has influence on a third official, by virtue of the primary relationship with the official from whose relationship he intends to benefit.

THE SCALES
The prosecutor suggests conciliating the increase of the general scale of fine penalties in very serious offenses, so that it covers those of corruption offenses. “To reconcile the increase of the general scale of complementary penalties, consisting of disqualifications in public functions, with the scales of complementary penalties imposed in corruption offenses.

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