The Emergence of Sentence Guidelines in the Balkans – Should Albania Follow the Same Model?

Adrian Leka, Brunilda Jani-Haxhiu

Different countries have established different models and mechanisms to assist the judge in the difficult task of determining the criminal sentence. These approaches are influenced by the criminal justice system model, the role of the judge in criminal proceedings and, not infrequently, by priority issues that are not related to the conceptualization of the criminal justice system: corruption, professionalism of judges, etc.

In countries that have a codified body of criminal law – as a rule, countries that belong to the civil law tradition, the criminal law sets the minimum and maximum ranges of the criminal punishment. Within these limits, it is up to the judge to determine the individualized sentence for each defendant, based on the principles and rules provided for by the criminal law.

Different types of mechanisms have been established in countries that belong to the common law tradition, as the criminal law is not so inflexible in setting the ranges of punishment and the judge has much more discretion in determining the sentence, based on the rules of precedent. In some of these countries, sentencing guidelines are used. These guidelines are usually approved by the judges themselves and are not legally binding, but they gain application as a result of the precedent rule.

In recent years, sentencing guidelines have been approved and applied in two of Albania’s neighboring countries: Kosovo and North Macedonia. This paper will address the role of guidelines in criminal proceedings, the models they were based on, the reasons for introducing them, and how they were implemented in Kosovo and North Macedonia. Finally, we will argue whether the introduction of such a mechanism in Albania would be in harmony with the existing framework and beneficial, in general.

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