MISDEMEANOR LAW PROTECTION OF PUBLIC ORDER: STATE AND TRENDS IN SERBIA
Keywords:
public order, misdemeanor law, police, state, trends, SerbiaAbstract
Purpose
The protection of public order (and peace) in Serbia is the subject of several legal regulations, but the Public Order and Peace Act is systemic in this area. From the very beginning of the creation of Serbian statehood, there was a need to protect public order in order to achieve a harmonized system in the realization of human rights and freedoms. The aim of this paper is to explore the protection of public order in misdemeanor legal, comparative, theoretical and empirical terms. The paper should explore how the incrimination of certain human behaviors that threatened public order went, but also the decriminalization of such behaviors depending on social development, moral values, etc. In this way, the authors believe that a comprehensive perception of public order in Serbia would be obtained. The authors place their research in the spatial context related to the territory of the Republic of Serbia and in the time frame for the period 2018-2023. This period was chosen as the beginning of the research time frame after the implementation of the new Public Order and Peace Law.
Design/Methods/Approach
The authors use normative method to analyze the norms of the laws. The authors will present and analyze statistical data and numbers related to the state and trends of public order protection from the point of misdemeanor law. For these purposes, the authors use data from the Ministry of Interior of Republic of Serbia for the period 2018-2023. Data from the Statistical Office of Serbia, Croatia and Montenegro related to the number of inhabitants were also used. Comparative method will be used for exploring the public order norms in some other states.
Findings
Throughout history, the process of incrimination and decriminalization of certain human behaviors, which for that period were understood as a threat to public order, can be observed. This especially applies to, for example, insulting a police officer. The norms governing these behaviors used to be scattered in various regulations, but more recently they have been codified in a systemic law regulating public order (and peace). The authors hypothesize that the state and trend of public order in Serbia after the amended legal text is relatively stable, that nominally the largest number of violations were committed in Belgrade (but this will be explored using the rate of misdemeanor), that the most frequent violations are related to quarrels and making noise, but there is a significant share of fights and provocations to fight but also that insulting a police officer is a significant part as new misdemeanor.
Originality/Value
The issue of public order has been poorly explored globally and both in Serbia and in the neighborhood. With this paper, the authors want to contribute to a better understanding of this issue by looking at all aspects through the prism of misdemeanor law. In this way, the law enforcement (police) will be able to come up with new preventive mechanisms in the coming period if this issue were to be reduced to the smallest possible extent in Serbia.
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