CRIMINAL MISUSE: SOME DISCUSSION ISSUES

Abstract

At present, the topic of the stated research is relevant because the phenomenon of "criminal offense" can become a novelty of the modern criminal legislation of the Russian Federation. There are objective grounds for this - this is the reintroduction of the draft federal law "On Amendments to the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation and the Criminal Procedure Code of the Russian Federation in connection with the introduction of the concept of a criminal offense" to the State Duma of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation. For this reason, the study was not conditioned by the decision on the expediency (benefit) of introducing this concept into the criminal legislation. The author's attention was focused on the problems of criminal misconduct discussed in the scientific literature and their solution in the proposed bill. The author limited the study to only the most significant questions, first of all about the genus of the criminal offense and some other issues that follow from this and require consideration. The study showed that the authors' predictions that the introduction of a criminal offense (if the bill is adopted) will hardly entail any conceptual changes in criminal legislation are hardly justified. We believe that the coverage of the concept of “criminal offense” will not be so global, at least in this edition, since a criminal offense does not have its own generic differences, being in essence a guilty socially dangerous act prohibited by criminal law. The specific difference, which does not characterize the essence of a criminal offense, but indicates its possible (in view of the relativity of this concept) legal consequence, is the application to the offender of other measures of a criminal-legal nature applied when a person is released from criminal liability.