The provisional balance of the CGPJ on reductions in sentences for the ‘law of only if it is yes’ figures in 103 the aggressors released | Spain

the law of only if it is yes It has already caused at least 943 sentence reductions for sexual offenders, of which 103 have led to the release of the convicted person. The General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ) continues to collect the data derived from the reviews of sentences carried out by the courts in application of the new law, which came into force last October. The judges’ governing body trusts to have a complete updated figure in the coming days, but the Council’s sources have advanced the provisional count, which includes data from 46 of the 50 provincial courts and 13 of the 17 superior courts. of Justice. The final data will therefore be higher, since the figures for the autonomous courts of Andalusia, Castilla y León, the Canary Islands and the Basque Country are missing, and for the hearings in Seville, Granada, Gipuzkoa and Teruel.

In the first official balance of the CGPJ, offered on March 2, the body estimated the reduced sentences at 721 and the releases, at 74. The figures, although they serve to get an idea of ​​how the law is being applied, are not complete. , since the CGPJ did not have the global data on matters reviewed, pending or pending review and this lack prevents it from being able to know, for example, what percentage of reviews are resulting in reduced sentences.

The figure achieved the reductions agreed by the provincial courts (674), the superior courts of justice (37) and the Supreme Court (10) since the regulation came into force. The data is known this time in full political debate for the proposal registered by the PSOE to reform the law of only yes yes with the aim of aggravating the penalties for attacks committed with violence or intimidation. The government partners, United We Can, reject this path and have registered amendments so that violence and intimidation are considered aggravating, which implies higher sentence increases than those of the socialist text. The PSOE has already announced that it will not accept these amendments, which forces it to reach an agreement with the PP to carry out its reform.

The provisional data from the CGPJ comes when the Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court has already set a plenary session for the next June 6 and 7 to unify criteria on the revisions of final sentences that the courts are agreeing on. The debate will focus on about twenty appeals, presented in most cases by the Prosecutor’s Office against resolutions of provincial courts that have agreed to reduce the punishment of sexual offenders in application of the law of the only yes is yes. Court sources warn that it is impossible to unify criteria on a single issue because there is none that contains all the cases that have been affected by the reform of the Penal Code. That is why it has been decided to select a score with which it is intended to cover a wide range of assumptions. No fruit, that will not prevent each case that subsequently reaches the hearings, the higher autonomous courts or the Supreme Court itself from having to be examined again individually.