SUPERIOR RESPONSIBILITY IN LAW ENFORCEMENT: A STUDY IN CRIMINAL LAW AND DISCIPLINE IN COLOMBIA

Abstract

This paper aims to determine the causes and consequences of a public official in Colombia, especially the security forces, in the granting of an order or decision in the exercise of their functions. It’s about finding a key position within the constitutional and legal level on criminal and disciplinary action.

Individual responsibility in law enforcement has become the subject of a detailed analysis in the Colombian state, arduous and difficult task that has faced the human being, especially the commanders and heads of units providing orders, for all his regulatory, legal, international and national - complex, individual responsibility for the control aims for the clarification of facts which violate the human rights of victims of them, looking for a penalty to those who have broken the rules, convinced that within his actions incur no grounds for criminal or disciplinary liability.

This individual responsibility for control has its origins in the world from the First and Second World War, with the establishment of the Ad Hoc Tribunals for Nuremberg, Tokyo, Ruanda and former Yugoslavia, where these arise criminal courts to investigate and punish those responsible for the crimes occurred in war.Both the world and in Colombia the rules of war and those governing conflicts impose the high command of the armed forces, the duty to make decisions that are constitutionally and legally implemented, allowing you to keep under subordination to a group of dependents, in order to prevent violent acts that violate the legal rights of persons within the jurisdiction in which they are assigned.

Today not only is criminally responsible within the institutions that make up the security forces, but it is also disciplinary, it is precisely the study of this analysis addresses the issue from two perspectives, that the Colombian state, the two procedures arise and none is excluded each other, otherwise the one complements the other.

While in the penal system, penalties are imposed, the disciplinary sanctioned until the dismissal of the staff, which leads to loss of office. This is to make the study of individual responsibility or liability of the superior officers of the security forces of the Colombian state.