CONCEPTS: Criminal Code / Cuban Law Association, Wilfredo Vallin Almeida #Cuba

By Wilfredo Vallín Almeida

As our readers know, the legal education of the national population constitutes one of the founding purposes of the Cuban Legal Association.

Given the importance of the topic and its need, we intend to continue working in this direction in this space, to assist with the preparation so necessary for everyone given current conditions.

So, we begin with a question and an answer: What is the Criminal Code?

Usually a Criminal Code is a compilation of those human behaviors deemed detrimental to social harmony and therefore  punishable because of theirs damage to the established order and organized peaceful relations that should exist in any civilized human community.

When the dangerousness of a human act (or even a failure to act) or conduct for the rest of the people in society is defined by the state as seriously harmful, it is considered and then defined as a “crime” and comes to occupy a place in the conduct to which we referred in the previous paragraph.

Each and every one of those human behaviors designed and offenses are listed, then retained and reflected in articles written consisting of the Criminal Code in question, so that individual behavior can be collated as described in the article prohibiting it, and which is understood that if it occurs, the subject’s behavior is criminal.

If the behavior of the subject in question does not match closely to the provisions of the letter of the law, then there is no crime.

So, in short, a criminal code is not simply the compilation of state-forbidden behavior, but also cover other aspects relating to the adequacy and enforcement of criminal justice.

Non-observance of its precepts will entail the suffering of a punishment (sentence) imposed by the state apparatus established for this purpose (the judicial system).

The Cuban criminal code, opens with some Preliminary Provisions which describe the objectives of the code in force in our country and which, in my opinion, it would be interesting to analyze in detail in future editions.

October 17 2012