Legal Framework of Gambling Offences

Abstract

Gambling has existed for centuries and has
taken on many forms during this period. Initially, there
wasn’t any criminal provision regarding the concept of games
of chance.
For instance the Penal Code1 of the People’s Socialist
Republic of Albania, in chapter X, named “criminal
contravention against social morality”, provides for the
prohibition of gambling.
Therefore, the Penal Code established the unlawful
character of a single subcategory of games of chance, the
gambling.
Obviously, this fact reflects the economic development at a
given time and society as well as the technological innovations
that, nowadays, influence increasingly this sector.
As part of the economic sector, games of chance have
experienced rapid growth in Albania in recent years.
This recent phenomenon is regulated and controlled by the
respective legal and institutional framework.
Such regulation, based on the category of the game of
chance, legitimates various forms of the respective sector,
implying the unlawful character of any other form not
mentioned in the law, by punishing those categories which run
contrary to the legal provisions.