Article title Importance of the Category of Offense to the Differentiation of Criminal Liability
Authors

Candidate of Law, Associate Professor, Judge of the Great Chamber of the Supreme Court (Kyiv, Ukraine) ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7582-2071 antoniuk_natalia@supreme.court.gov.ua

 

Name of magazine Legal journal «Law of Ukraine» (Ukrainian version)
Issue 11/2020
Сторінки [158-172]
Annotation

The emergence of the category of offenses has had an impact on the classification of criminal violations and has started the discussions upon the necessity of such classification, concerning the differentiation of criminal liability. The question arises if the implementation of this new category (for our criminal law) has occurred only in the division of criminal violations on crimes and offenses or has influenced the other criminallegal categories.

This research aims to define the importance of the category of criminal offenses to such a phenomenon as the differentiation of criminal liability. For instance, it is necessary to find out if division on crimes and criminal offenses can be recognized as one of themeans of differentiation of criminal liability or as the type of differentiation of criminal liability.

While working upon this article, it has been figured out, that some differentiating provisions, which cannot be applied to crimes, however, concern criminal offenses. Especially it said about the possibility of imposing certain punishments for committing crime or offense, of criminal liability for preparation, as well as some aspects of statute limitation and criminal record. At the same time, some cross-cutting differentiating provisions still can be implemented to both categories of criminal violations.

In this article, we try to draw attention to fact that the classification of criminal violations is not one of the means of differentiation of criminal liability. It is not an instrument (due to certain criteria) of the legislator, which can be used for the provision of the variability of criminal liability. Obviously, the classification of criminal violations is of great importance for constructing criminal code, as it supports its system, brevity, structure, and logic of code provisions. This classification of criminal violations is the base for future differentiation of criminal liability.

Taking into account the influence of the category of offenses on some cross-cutting provisions of criminal law, considering the feature of the severity of criminal violation we can conclude that it is reasonable to identify the new types of differentiation of criminal liability: 1) differentiation of criminal liability for committing the offense; 2) differentiation of criminal liability for committing a crime.

We suppose that this category of criminal violations, as well as the phenomenon of classification criminal violations in its essence is not prescribed for scaling criminal liability. That’s why it is not one of the means of differentiation of criminal liability.

We also want to draw attention to the somewhat “mechanical” approach of the legislator to the division of criminal violations on crimes and offenses. The existing division is based on an actual change of sanction to attribute certain actions to the category of crime or offense. And such a process of artificially constructed sanctions has some flaws. Division on crimes and offenses must serve a certain aim of material law, not procedural. That’s why in the future it is necessary to formulate the material grounds to reason such a division. Domination of procedural grounds over material is unacceptable.

All criminal violations must be prescribed in the same law. Existence of two separate codes on offenses and crimes, besides Code of Ukraine on administrative violations is unreasonable.

 

Keywords differentiation of criminal liability; criminal offense; crime; means; type
References

Bibliography

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