EL SISTEMA PENITENCIARI CATALÀ: FONAMENT I EXERCICI DE LA COMPETÈNCIA

The Statute of autonomy for Catalonia has given to the Autonomous Community the executive power in penitentiary affairs. This fact, unique in Spain and with few equivalent counterparts in other countries, has raised from the legal point of view the need to draw a divide between this power and the State’s exclusive power on criminal, procedural and penitentiary law. Moreover, this uniqueness encourages analysis to test to what extent this autonomous power can explain the real differences between the Catalan prison system and the Spanish prisons administered by the State. The smaller prison population in Catalonia is an indicator of such a difference. By way of conclusion, the study reveals that such a difference cannot be primarily attributed to a singularity in the exercise of the power in prison affairs, and that the penitentiary official data available do not establish that decisions taken by the various actors in the criminal justice system are a sign of any less punitive attitudes in Catalonia. .