PARTIAL INSANITY AND OTHER MITIGATING PSYCHOLOGICAL CIRCUMSTANCES UNDER ALBANIAN CRIMINAL LAW

Abstract

Albanian criminal legislation gives a special place to the mitigating circumstances of a psychological nature applied to the perpetrators of criminal offenses. In the Albanian doctrine, the psychological state is considered part of the subjective component which in itself has, in essence, the existence or not of responsibility and the extent of the perpetrator's guilt. Referring to its formulation, the article of the Criminal Code providing for the mitigating circumstances mentions only one circumstance of a psychological character, psychiatric distress. The same relevance and legal treatment as the mitigating circumstances can be encountered in other institutes, such as the reduction of mental balance or the commission of a criminal offense in a state of intoxication. Thus, this manuscript analyzes the mitigating circumstances provided by the Albanian criminal legislation through the method of comparison while identifying the shortcomings in cases when these circumstances constitute at the same time general institutes of criminal law.

Keywords: Albanian criminal law, mitigating circumstances, partial insanity, psychiatric distress, inebriation, narcotic intoxication, emotional state