Descriptive elements as a legislative technique: critical considerations towards the crimes of theft and breaking and entering

Abstract

The legislative technique used in the writing of a criminal regulation must be extremely cautious to obtain the proposed objectives and to respect the limits imposed to legal punitive authority. From this point of view, it is usually stated that the use of descriptive concepts should prevail over other technical-legal devices when a crime is defined. This article demystifies this affirmation, due to some examples extracted from the legal regulation of the crimes of theft and breaking and entering.