Withdrawal of Prior Complaint and Reconciliation of the Parties, Criminal Justice Restorative Models, Between Tradition and Innovation in the Conception of the New Codes

摘要

Prior complaint appears in all Romanian Criminal Codes as a special means of referral of judicial bodies, but also as a condition for holding offenders criminally accountable. This institution, with limited incidence in the Criminal Code of 1864, only in the case of two offenses, is later qualified in the Criminal Code of 1936, as a condition regarding the criminalization of offenses. The Criminal Code of 1968 regulated as autonomous institutions the absence of prior complaint and the reconciliation of the parties among the cases removing criminal liability, withdrawal of prior complaint being subsumed to the institution of absence of complaint. The future regulation does not bring substantial amendments regarding the conditions of substance and form of the prior complaint, but, instead, is characterized by changes in the institutions related to prior complaint, respectively the institution of reconciliation of the parties and the withdrawal of the prior complaint, which for the first time knows a distinct regulation.