This article represents a study on the criminal provisions applicable to juvenile offenders. They underwent a number of fundamental changes with the entry into force of the new Penal Code on 1 February 2014, with the legislature preferring to abandon the mixed sanctioning system made up of educational measures and punishments to the detriment of a regime exclusively made up of educational measures.Such an approach is fully in line with European criminal policy and is capable of effectively contributing to the re-education and protection of juvenile offenders. Fixing the age of the majority is of fundamental importance, as from that moment on, the person who commits an offense will be penalized as a major criminal. Establishing this age threshold is subject to the notion of discernment of the minor, involving a dual dimension, intelectual and volitional, which is left to the discretion of judges, who resort to expert expertise to establish the existence or lack of discernment.Penalties for juvenile offenders require the court to carry out a careful analysis of the circumstances of the offense and personality of the juvenile who is criminally responsible in order to determine the appropriate sanctioning regime. In this context, the criminal capacity will be related to the moment when the minor, having a psychological development according to his or her age, has the capacity to distinguish between socially acceptable behavior according to the rule of law and another unacceptable social point of view and at the same time punishable from a criminal point of view.