Juvenile Justice in Spain

Abstract

Although the juvenile justice system in Spain emerged at the beginning of the 20th century, in accordance with the general movement at that moment in the Western world, the distinctive circumstance of the Franco dictatorship (1939 to 1975) meant that Spain maintained a tutelary approach while things were changing in the rest of the Western world. Spain presently has a criminal responsibility law for juveniles, Organic Law 5/2000 of January 12, which came into effect January 13, 2001 at a moment when criminal justice policy in general and juvenile justice policy in particular were in crisis. Although the law initially was conceived as a progressive law, the end result, after some criminal justice policy decisions, was the minimizing of some of the fundamental principles of law. Spain, in this sense, has embraced a much more repressive approach, paralleling new trends elsewhere in the Western world.