The correlation between the occasional offender and the inexigibility of different conduct

Abstract

The article examines the relationship between the criminological classification of offenders (occasional, symptomatic and characterological) and the exclusion of culpability based on the inexigibility of different conduct. The methodology is interdisciplinary, combining criminological analysis (primary and secondary factors, restraining mechanisms) and criminal-dogmatic analysis (elements of culpability: imputability, potential awareness of unlawfulness and the power to act otherwise). The author argues that the inexigibility of different conduct, as a situation opposed to the "power to act otherwise", requires an agent with a normal personality whose restraining mechanisms have been broken by exceptional triggering factors. He concludes that only the occasional offender can be protected by this cause of exclusion of culpability, since symptomatic and essential crimes arise from psychological disturbance or character defect, not from exceptional circumstances that would break the restraining mechanisms of any normal person.