There is temptation to talk of paradigms shifts in criminal justice. In recent years, therapeutic jurisprudence and problem-solving courts have been identified as ideas that have affected the conceptualization and operation of common-law system. Its basic premises about treatment instead of punishment remind on the assumptions of positivist school of criminology, a social movement developed in the continental Europe during the 1800s and early 1900s, meritorious for promotion of security measure as a special type of criminal sanction in civil law system. The ideas are the same, but approaches of two opposing systems are different. The purpose of this paper is to explore these different approaches, analyzing therapeutic jurisprudence, problem solving courts and security measures. Basic assumptions of therapeutic justice and development of this concept are analyzed in the first part of the research. Second part deals with problem solving courts, its emergence, reasons of establishment and procedure in front of them, while the last part is dedicated to medical security measures, their regulation in civil law systems and different approaches of regular and problem solving courts in dealing with the offenders that need medical treatment.

Technological development and new forms of crime require redefinition of existing legal frameworks at domestic and international level. EncroChat and SkyEcc cases highlighted these problems, throwing the courts before the old Packer's dilemma, whether to give priority to crime control or due process model. While the protection of citizens' rights prevailed for many years, guided by the maxims that "the democracy of a society is measured by the provisions of its criminal procedure" and that "it is better 100 guilty persons to escape than that one innocent person suffer" it seems that in the era of information technologies, another model prevails, legitimizing almost unimaginable concepts such as mass surveillance of communications with derogation of the principle of territorial sovereignty. The "problem" escalated and came to the attention of many European countries after the "breaking" of the communication platforms EncroChat and SKY Ecc, which certainly contributed to the detection (and prevention) of numerous criminal acts by criminal groups, while at the same time opened many questions, starting from the method of discovering communication, delivering material to other countries and using it in criminal proceedings, the validity and admissibility of the so-called of "mass surveillance" that affects not only "criminals" but also "ordinary citizens", i.e. all users of certain communication platforms. The first part of the paper deals with the issues how these networks were break down, the legal basis for such actions, the legal basis for providing the obtained data to other countries, their evaluation and further use in criminal proceedings. As different countries have different procedural rules, the question is whether a domestic judge is authorized to evaluate the legality of evidence obtained abroad and according to what criteria? In this regard, a distinction is made between EU member states where European investigative orders and the principle of mutual recognition apply and other countries in the system of mutual legal assistance in criminal matters. In the second part, we deal with the legal nature of the obtained data through the dilemma of whether it was targeted surveillance in criminal proceedings, or mass surveillance carried out by the intelligence services, as well as the ECtHR's practice related to these issues. Bearing in mind that these investigations are still under the "veil of silence", the study was based on Europol/Eurojust data and few publicly available decisions of courts in Germany and the United Kingdom about the admissibility of these evidence.

This paper examines the alignment of the Republic of Serbia's criminal legislation with EU Environmental Crime Directive 2024/1203. Although the Directive does not specifically address animal protection, several criminal offenses EU member states are required to enforce directly involve the protection of wild animal species. Member states are thus required to impose strict penalties for actions such as killing, destroying, possessing, buying, selling, offering for sale, importing, exporting, or unlawfully trading these species or their derivatives. In the Criminal Code of the Republic of Serbia, these actions can be classified under various criminal offenses and misdemeanors, often aimed at primarily safeguarding the economy, market, customs system, and similar interests rather than nature itself. Based on the premise that the current legal framework is insufficient to provide animals with adequate protection, the paper analyzes existing criminal provisions related to animal protection and assesses their alignment with the Directive. The paper also addresses several controversial theoretical questions, such as whether animals can even be recognized as subjects of criminal law protection, whether they can be granted legal personhood, and whether it is appropriate to classify them as movable property or "goods" in the eyes of the law. Finally, it examines the problematic relationship between criminal offenses and misdemeanors in this area, where overlapping legal definitions pose a risk that initiating misdemeanor proceedings and imposing misdemeanor penalties could, in fact, shield offenders from criminal liability.

The criminal offense of animal killing and abuse was introduced into the Criminal Code of the Republic of Serbia in 2006, and in 2009, the Animal Welfare Law was adopted. It is alarming that the perpetrators of this criminal offense, who exhibit violent behaviour toward animals, are often very young individuals, i.e., children under the age of 14 and so who cannot be held criminally responsible. Timely recognition and punishment of such behaviour is crucial, as it can help prevent future violence against humans and raise public awareness about the significance and role of animals in our society. According to Serbian law, children under the age of 14 are not criminally responsible, while for minors between the ages of 14 and 18, a special juvenile procedure is conducted, and specific sanctions are imposed. The authors? initial hypothesis is that children and minors relatively often abuse animals, but the social and legal response to such behaviour is inadequate, and indeed, often entirely lacking. The aim of this paper is to highlight the frequency of animal cruelty among juvenile offenders and children and to emphasize the importance of a timely and appropriate response from all relevant sectors of society.

The journal Crimen 3/2023 published an article entitled "Lowering the age limit of criminal responsibility: an eternal dilemma?" in which the author presents arguments against this solution. The aim of this analysis is to provide the opposite arguments, in favor of lowering the minimum age of criminal responsibility, so that the reader can make his judgment based on the pro and contra argumentation. Opponents of lowering the minimum age of criminal responsibility (MACR) mostly refer to the argument of "accepted international standards" as well as to the humane, altruistic statement that children perpetrators of criminal offenses are most often victims of poor socio-economic conditions that "force them into crime", so that they should not be punished, but that they should be helped. In the first part of the paper are analysed international standards and MACR in European and non-European countries. We are proving that international standards regarding MACR does not exists, but MACR is different in different countries. The structure of juvenile crime in Serbia is analysed in the second part. Statistical data show that juvenile crime in recent years is increasingly violent and brutal, what confirm the thesis that MACR should be lowered. The third part of the paper deals with juveniles sanctions. They are relatively mild and do not differ much from the measures of social protection, except that they are not imposed by social services but by judicial authorities, whose authority can only act encouragingly and frighteningly on the child to stop with criminal behaviour. In this sense, we do not see that lowering the MACR would drastically "deteriorate" the position of children, except that perhaps the fear of "criminal responsibility" would deter them from committing criminal offenses. In the end, we deal with the psycho-physical (in)maturity of children starting from the premise that we should not only observe the protection and interests of the child perpetrator, but also the protection and interests of the child victims and victims in general, who feel powerless in a system in which they cannot achieve material or moral satisfaction. Statistics show that the most common victims of juvenile crime are other children, and protection of the childperpetrator in such cases means neglection of the child-victim. The law cannot and should not be only "particularly human", neither for the sake of abstract "humanity" turn an eye to concrete crimes. The issue of lowering the age of criminal responsibility below 14 should be considered because this limit was set at another time and for minors who had a completely different lifestyle and who committed mostly property crimes. Having in mind all that, we advocate that MACR should be reduced to 12 years for all or alternatively only for violent crimes, and in terms of "criminally irresponsible" children, some form of parental criminal responsibility should be introduced. Because the child, by birth itself becomes a legal subject, and the consequences of his actions or the pain inflicted on the victim cannot be attributed to "force majeure", but exclusively to their guilt or the guilt of their parents.