ANALYSIS OF COURT PRACTICE IN CHILDREN'S OFFENSES - THE SITUATION IN THE REPUBLIC OF NORTH MACEDONIA

Abstract

The sanctions that are provided for children in a state represent one of the most significant concepts in the entire juvenile criminal law, because the method of sanctioning and the type and amount of the sanction greatly affect the development of a child. When it comes to sanctions for children in RSM, before the Law on Juvenile Justice was adopted, the provisions for sanctions were part of the Criminal Code of Macedonia.In Article 73 of the Criminal Law, we are talking about the purpose of educational measures, punishment and alternative measures, and according to it "the purpose of educational measures of punishment and alternative measures is to create protection and help for juvenile perpetrators of crimes, by exercising supervision over them , with their professional training and by developing their personal responsibility, to ensure their education, re-education and proper development. The purpose of the juvenile prison is to exert a strong influence on the juvenile perpetrators not to commit criminal acts in the future, as well as on other minors not to commit criminal acts.” A direct consequence of juvenile criminality is the increase in recidivism during the commission of crimes, that is, the early start of the "criminal career" as a rule leads to an increase in this phenomenon. In the Republic of North Macedonia, the criminal law provisions for minors are set out in the Lex specialis - Law on Children's Justice. This law regulates the position of children and minors who have committed an act that is prescribed by law as criminal. In this paper, emphasis is placed on the analysis of court practice and the situation with child delinquency in RSM for the period from 2019 to 2021, where the crimes, sanctions and verdicts are shown.For the purposes of this paper, the necessary data were collected through relevant institutions such as the State Council for the Prevention of Child Delinquency, the Basic Courts in RSM, MIA and others, as well as many testimonies of juvenile offenders. The data were processed and presented using statistical methods of description, comparative analysis, graphic displays and other tools in order to get a clearer picture of the problem of this paper.