Общественото порицание в контекста на българското наказателно право

Abstract

The subject of this article is the study of the role, meaning and place of the punishment called “public reprimand” in Bulgarian criminal law, particularly in the Criminal Code. The paper studies the nature and content of public reprimand as a type of punishment, and traces, albeit more generally, its development in Bulgarian criminal law, taking into account its importance relevant to previous periods. The regulation of public reprimand in criminal law, specifically its place in the system of penalties under the Criminal Code, is clarified, mentioning individual criminal cases in which public reprimand is intended to be imposed. In addition, a comparative legal analysis is carried out, on the basis of which separate observations are made regarding the regulation of public reprimand, and examples of foreign criminal laws are summarized. At the same time, the article raises specific questions about the effectiveness of public reprimand as a type of punishment used in the fight against crime, drawing specific conclusions about the extent to which public reprimand actually achieves the objectives of punishment in the Penal Code. The moral character of public reprimand is also touched upon, and the possibility is discussed, respectively the lack of such, when using it as a punishment in order to observe one of the most important criminal law principles which all types of punishment under Bulgarian criminal law rely on – the correspondence between punishment and crime. A new approach to the settlement of public reprimand is proposed, aimed at its elimination as a type of punishment from the system of punishments under the Bulgarian Penal Code.