EL NUEVO SISTEMA DE ALTERNATIVAS A LA EJECUCIÓN DE LA PRISIÓN EN EL DERECHO PENAL ESPAÑOL: UNA CIERTA UNIFICACIÓN.

Among the modifications of the Spanish Criminal Code incorporated by the LO 1/2015 there are several that stand out especially. One of them, embodied by the new wording of Articles 80 to 94 bis, is the establishment of a new system of alternative forms of enforcement of custodial sentences through, above all, a formally and procedurally unified regulation of the different types of suspended sentences and non-custodial alternative penalties, through the formal consideration of expulsion (not only of foreigners who are staying illegally in Spain) as the only form of “substitute penalty to prison", and through the transformation of the conditional release, which is no longer the last period of imprisonment in the progressive system and becomes the conditional suspension of the execution of the last period of the custodial sentence. This paper analyzes the real scope of these changes from a systemic perspective, a scope that in some cases has been missrepresented by the government and the legislature in their justification of the reform as a unification around the concept of suspended sentence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]