Continued crime, unit of action and judicial practice

Abstract

This contribution seeks to critically analyze the doctrines that have proposed criteria for resolving cases where the potential concurrence of what doctrine refers to as a continuing offense is questioned. This analysis supports the idea that none of these doctrines have achieved a higher degree of recognition, either within the doctrine itself or in judicial practice. In all cases, they tend to justify why it might seem reasonable to assign these cases a more favorable (penologically privileged) treatment compared to cases of real homogeneous concurrence, rather than genuinely justifying that these are cases of unitary execution. In particular, this is mistakenly expressed in proposals that aim to arrive at universally valid criteria. Therefore, it concludes that the lack of recognition stems from the method of approach used, supporting the idea that the resolution of these problematic cases ultimately depends on an appropriate process of subsumption based on the interpretation of each specific type of offense, in accordance with all and each of the elements used in the various descriptions of the crime.