El fracaso de la pena privativa de libertad y su coste económico

Resum

Custodial sentences are, today, still the star penalty of our criminal legal system in spite of the timid efforts of the legislator to remove them from the list of punitive preferences and to promote non-custodial sentences such as fines and community service in their stead. Thus, punitive populism has kept custodial sentences impervious to passing time, and to the currents that request their abolition or, at least, a lesser frequency in their application. It must be noted that custodial sentences, beyond the special preventive ideals that the Spanish Constitution attributes to them in its article 25.2, are still a form of retribution for the crime committed, a de-socialization prior to an alleged resocialization that implies uprooting and sometimes rage on the part of the convicted due to the ineffectiveness of a slow and unwieldy criminal system, whose economic cost is, moreover, very high.