Spain
| Date | 01 July 2005 |
| Published date | 01 July 2005 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1477370805054101 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Spain
Rosemary Barberet
Universidad Carlos III, Madrid, Spain
ABSTRACT
Crime and justice in Spain reflect its history, geography and political develop-
ment. During the period of transition to democracy in the 1970s and early
1980s, crime was not the issue as much as the development of a criminal justice
system that would protect the rights of the accused and the humane treatment
of those incarcerated. Basque terrorism monopolized the attention of the
government and the public. Similarly today, Spaniards consider unemployment
and terrorism to be much more important social problems than non-political
forms of crime. The country has enjoyed relatively low and stable crime rates
over the past decade. However, concern for victims and the rise of law and order
discourse in political spheres mean that crime issues are now placed on the
public agenda. Spanish criminology – energetic, dispersed among disciplines,
and increasingly empirical – is slowly becoming institutionalized.
KEY WORDS
Crime / Criminal Justice / Policy / Research / Spain.
Introduction
In Spain, crime, criminal justice, and criminological research are increas-
ingly politicized as the country moves out of isolation and takes its place in
Europe and the world. Spain has often been quicker to respond to external
influences than to capitalize on its own innovations, and those dispositions
have been reflected in the development of criminology. The subject has a
respectable point of departure in Spanish intellectual history, but its past
development has not been continuous. Present-day criminology in Spain is
varied, energetic, and dispersed between disciplines, traditions, and institu-
tional settings.
Volume 2 (3): 341–368: 1477-3708
DOI: 101177/1477370805054101
Copyright © 2005 European Society of
Criminology and SAGE Publications
London, Thousand Oaks CA, and New Delhi
www.sagepublications.com
COUNTRY SURVEY
The late 19th and early 20th centuries were the positivist era in
Spanish criminology, as evidenced by scholars such as Pedro Dorado
Montero, Rafael Salillas and Constancio Bernaldo de Quir´os. Influential in
that era were the correccionalistas such as Concepci ´on Arenal who believed
in the redemption of the offender. Both of these influences contribute to the
present-day strengths of psychological criminology in Spain and particu-
larly its emphasis on offender diagnosis. The years of the authoritarian
regime of General Franco (1939–75) interrupted the consolidation of many
social sciences, not only criminology, but precisely when criminological
theory and research prospered in other countries. Research that exposed
the functioning of the police, courts or prisons was unwelcome. The
loosening of the regime in its final years, as well as social protest, brought
Spain back in touch with criminology, particularly with its critical ele-
ments. The transition to democracy brought increases in crime as well as
reforms in laws and criminal justice institutions; as Spain’s democracy
consolidates, there is an increasing need for applied, administrative and
realist criminology. However, given the increased politicization of crime
and public safety, the voice of critical criminology is no less needed. Spain’s
regionalism and nationalism has brought variety and innovation to crim-
inal justice institutions, along with a tradition of violence among Basque
separatists since the early 1960s. Its position on the edge of Europe and
close to Africa, along with its cultural and language ties to Latin America,
make Spain a natural ‘host’ to new waves of immigrants, and also
vulnerable to drug traffickers. At the same time, Spain is a tourist haven: its
crime rates are consistently higher in tourist areas. Spain’s recent permiss-
iveness towards prostitution has created a burgeoning sex industry.
Studies of Spanish social policy have only just started to blossom, and
criminal justice policy has been rarely influenced by empirical work.
Although Spain is home to the International Institute of the Sociology of
Law in O ˜nati, empirical work on the legislative process in Spain is incipient
and there has been a negligible impact of criminological work available on
Spanish criminal justice policy. Although Spanish criminologists have been
producing applied research over the past 15 years, there is still a lack of
demand from the state for applied research to inform its decisions, and
critics term much of current legislation ‘symbolic criminal law’ (Varona
Mart´ınez 2000) that is meant to appease the demands of voters but not
backed up with either facts or funds. Spanish politicians are ready to
embark on the ‘law and order’ rhetoric observed elsewhere, for example in
Poland (Krajewski 2004), Estonia (Saar 2004) or in the USA and England
and Wales (Garland 2001), but without much data, analysis or theory. This
stands in stark contrast to other areas of social policy in Spain, such as
women’s issues and even drugs, which have separate governmental insti-
342 European Journal of Criminology 2(3)
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