Overuse of the Criminal Justice System: Rules and Practices

The study proposes a characterization of contemporary criminal justice policy in accordance to the overuse that public authorities make of crime control interventions. As a guideline for describing and evaluating the overuse, the article chooses the social exclusion effects that this excess brings about on three groups subjected to crime control, that is, suspects, offenders and ex-offenders. Once justified the selection of this criterion as more comprehensive than the usual one of punitiveness, the paper analyzes in 11 subsections a set of punitive rules and practices which are more and more rooted in our crime control systems and comprise the areas of criminalization, prosecution and enforcement of sanctions. In each subsection, the author shows the relevant social exclusionary effects that those punitive rules and practices entail.