Some Characteristics of a Criminal offense of Abusing Position and Authority in the Judicial Practice of the Zagreb County Court with Emphasis on Punishing Perpetrators, especially Police Officers

Abstract

This paper gathers the results of conducted research of criminal offense of Abusing position and authority under Art. 291. of the Criminal Code of the Republic of the Croatia (hereinafter CC) in the case law of the Zagreb County Court in a three-year period, from 1st January 2015 until 31st December 2017., with emphasis on punishing the perpetrators, especially police officers. The perpetrators of this criminal offense are predominantly official persons and less responsible persons, who predominantly commit the basic form of the criminal offense described in Art. 291. Paragraph 1. CC. Of the official persons, the most common perpetrators are police officers (from them mostly traffic police officers). The act of committing this criminal offense is mostly achieved through the exploitation of the position and authority with the intention of gaining benefit for himself or for another person (66.7 %). In a small number of cases the perpetrators cumulatively with such exploitation of the position and authority, did not perform their duties (25 %) or exceeded their powers (8.3 %). Regarding the punishment of perpetrators, from the results of this research, 75 % of the perpetrator was sentenced to imprisonment in lower limit of the law prescribed punishment, and this sentence was replaced with probation (out of which 50 % were police officers), for 16.7 % of the perpetrators is was pronounced conditional sentence (of which 25 % to the police officers), and 4.2 % of the perpetrator was pronounced partial conditional sentence. A secondary fine was imposed for 7 % of the total number of perpetrators (71.5 % of whom were police officers). Security measures of prohibiting the performance of certain duties or vocations were pronounced for 29.2 % of the total number of perpetrators (of which 20.8% of the police officers). The purpose of imposing a security measure of prohibition of performing certain duties or vocations for police officers is also discuss in the paper