Concept, types and meaning: the elements of a crime

What is the crime and its composition? The subjective and objective features and their totality, established by the criminal law, which characterize a criminal act dangerous to society, determine the main significance. The nature of the crime serves as the basis for criminal liability. The criminal legislation of the Russian Federation does not disclose the very concept, nevertheless, they are widely used in investigative and judicial practice, the theory of law, the Criminal Procedure Code and the Criminal Code.

Elements and their meaning

The crime consists of only four elements:

A) the object of the crime to which the encroachment is directed (goods, values, public relations, which the criminal law must protect);

B) the objective side (that is, the most dangerous act, its external side, dangerous consequences for society and the obvious connection between crime and consequences, tools, means, means, time, situation, location where the crime was committed);

C) the subjective side (that is, what is inside the committed crime: the mental state, the attitude of the offender to the crime and its consequences: intent or negligence, purpose and motive, emotional state at the time of the act);

D) the subject of the crime (sane person at the age of criminal responsibility).

To conduct any kind of legal activity, each of the above elements is of decisive importance.

The composition of the crime also has the characteristics that characterize these elements, there are also four groups:

A) those characteristics that directly characterize the object, the crime and the victim;

B) characteristics of the objective side (the act and consequences of the crime, the causal relationship established between them, time, situation, means, method, tools and place);

C) the subjective side also has its own characteristics: fault, motive, emotion, purpose;

D) the characteristics of the subject (the sanity of an individual, the existence of an age at which criminal responsibility is possible).

The signs of each of the four elements are also of fundamental importance. The offense has mandatory and optional elements.

Mandatory and optional

Mandatory elements must be available, and the absence of even the single of them means a complete lack of composition. The importance of mandatory elements of the crime, including their objective side, should include:

• Object of crime.
• Inaction or action, harmful consequences, directly related to inaction or action, and the connections must be causal.
• Relative to the subject, the elements must have the characteristics of a physically responsible person and a certain age of it.
• Wines as intent or negligence.

The meaning of the elements of the crime is enormous, only they can determine the competence of the criminal prosecution.

Optional elements are necessary for constructing crimes as additional to the basic ones, they can become mandatory for the investigated composition and optional for the others. For example:

A) concerning the object: the victim and the objects;

B) from the objective side - place, situation, time, method, tools;

C) with respect to the subject, a special subject;

D) from the subjective side - the emotional state, purpose and motive.

The meaning of the elements of the crime is truly great, since their presence will be the only argument for criminal responsibility.

Classification: degrees of community and social danger

The composition of the crime is significantly different from each other, they can also be divided into four parts according to similar characteristics. It is precisely with the accuracy of the definitions that the meaning of the crime is clarified. Kinds of them are like that.

1. The degree of generality in the systemic traits of crimes: general, generic, species and specific composition.

• The first consists of a set of features and elements that are present in all compositions, they are characterized by criminal acts.
• The second is the generalization of the characteristics of identical crimes, which indicates the characteristics inherent in the group of encroachments of the same section of the Criminal Code.
• The third composition is a legislative characteristic of the crimes of certain groups.
• The fourth is the cumulative signs of the crime of a specific rule of criminal law.

2. The degree of public danger of the crime under investigation indicates a basic, privileged and qualified composition.

• The first - the main one - contains a complete set of basic (mandatory) subjective and objective attributes of this composition, where the crime is clearly distinguishable and does not contain any aggravating or mitigating circumstances.
• The second composition is privileged, that is, containing mitigating signs, which indicate a lesser danger to the society of this act and serve as a basis for reducing the amount of punishment in comparison with the penalties for the crimes of the basic composition.
• A qualified composition is an act with aggravating circumstances, supplemented with specific signs of a crime, which indicate a greater danger to the society of the given act, and therefore entail a more severe punishment as compared with the punishment of the basic composition.

The signs of the first two species show how great the meaning of the corpus delicti is. Kinds of them precisely delineate the degree of punishment for perpetrators committed.

Classification: method of description and design features

Ways of describing in the laws of signs of crimes can be of three types: simple, complex and alternative. The first composition gives all the subjective and objective attributes once, the complex contains additional characteristics or elements in the quantitative plan, the alternative composition is a kind of complex, and its peculiarity is that there is an indication of the options for a criminal action or mode of action that all at once or Each individually determine the composition of the crime. Thus, this or that value of the objective attributes of the crime is manifested.

Features of the design features of the object and its objective side - at the time of completion, the compositions can be tangible, formal or truncated. In the first formulations, together with the action, the sign of the corpus delicti are the consequences without fail, and the crimes themselves can be considered complete as soon as the consequences foreseen by the laws are dangerous for society. The formal composition is directed solely at a dangerous action or inaction for society, which serves as the basis for liability, and it does not depend on the onset of the consequences of the act. The truncated composition of the crime (concept, meaning, signs) has a design in which the crime is considered to have been completed at an earlier stage - from the moment of committing the act, from attempting or from preparation to a criminal offense, and this does not depend on the completion of the conceived.

Definitions

The category of the offense for very long time has been used exceptionally widely in practice, but the criminal law has not used this definition until very recently. The Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, at last, fixed the decisive role of such a concept, although it did not give a clear definition. But this gap was filled by the theory of law.

This means that the composition of the crime is the criminal law provided for in the hypotheses and in dispositions and that gives the characteristic of a specific socially dangerous act as a crime, subjective and objective elements (signs) acting in the system. Here is the main definition: a system in which the elements (signs) are the meaning of the corpus delicti. It has already been mentioned above that the crime consists of four subsystems: the object and its objective side, the subject and its subjective side. The meaning of the elements of the crime is that they are all grounds for criminal responsibility. If at least one element is missing, no criminal liability is foreseen. For example, if the crime was committed by an insane person, this is the absence of a crime subject.

Concept of legislation

Legislatively formulated crimes in the Criminal Code are based on the study of existing situations and the commission of certain acts of people who began to show signs of growth, are undesirable and harmful from the point of view of the public. The criminal-legal significance of the corpus delicti is a code that is adequately built and correctly reflects the entire system of relations that are formed in society, especially their distortions are detrimental, hindering socially useful activities and undermining justice.

The legislator is like a natural scientist who does not produce laws and does not invent them, but only a formulator, who tries to express in internal laws the internal laws concerning spiritual relations. So the meaning of the corpus delicti in criminal law is expressed in the Criminal Code (Special Part), where one crime can be distinguished from another. For example, theft from extortion, robbery from hooliganism is distinguished only by different signs of the composition of these crimes.

In Russia

First a little about Roman and English law. In ancient Rome, theft was understood as violated property rights, including unpaid debt. English criminal law stealing considers a variety of ways of encroachment on someone else's property, even if a person has appropriated something found or cheated with electricity. And in Russia, criminal law concludes specific crimes, the list of which is exhaustive.

And this means that it is only possible to criminalize and recognize a crime as behavior that coincides with the characteristics of this particular composition. The legal values of the corpus delicti in the Criminal Code are reflected in the form of not all consecutive actual signs, but the most significant and typical subjective and objective, collectively characterizing the given act as socially dangerous.

Unfinished and terminated crimes

In some articles (the Special Part of the Criminal Code), signs of strictly completed crimes are described, which the performers did together with co-executors or alone. Nevertheless, the General Part of the Criminal Code contains provisions on unfinished crimes, in which there is preparation or attempted crime.

The significance of the subjective side of the corpus delicti is that the General part describes the signs of both individual and inherent crimes. When a person performed, for example, the functions of an instigator, organizer or accomplice and did not personally carry out the actions of the crime, then the composition of the organization, incitement or complicity is considered in the deed. For each criminal step has the corresponding signs.

Any crime can be characterized by a variety of subjective and objective characteristics, features and features inherent only in it. The articles of the Criminal Code (the Special Part) refer only to the most stable elements and their constituent features: the object, the parties to the criminal act, both subjective and objective, after which the act throughout the system is determined or not defined as a crime. The significance of the objective side of the corpus delicti is important precisely because here it considers inaction or action, a dangerous consequence for society, the circumstances of the place and time, causal connections, conditions, means and methods, tools in the commission of a crime - that is, defining characteristics.

Model

Only by summarizing the inherent characteristics characteristic of each crime composition can one create a scientific abstraction that constitutes a general concept that includes the above mentioned characteristics, all four of their groups (also called the parties of the composition or its elements). They give a description of the object, its objective side, the subjective side and the subject of the crime. This model (concept) is usually used in educational institutions and has great methodological significance. Since each side of the corpus delicti has its own specific signs, each composition is, in its own way, specific and unrepeatable.

In the general composition of the crime are necessary, that is, mandatory for any composition, signs, as well as a number of individual, uncharacteristic, facultative. For example, the place, time, means, tools, ways of committing a crime, the consequences of it and the situation under which all this occurs are not always included in a certain part of the crime, but inaction and action are the objective side, and its signs are simply Are mandatory for each composition. However, the elements of crimes do not specifically specify the mandatory or optional signs in the Criminal Code (Special Part). The signs of such a plan are estimated or formally defined, as described by verbal means - specific legal terms, concepts, well-known words.

Examples

There are several criteria, that is, the grounds on which crimes are classified in the Criminal Code (Special Part). The number of mandatory signs of the objective side and the construction of the crime make it clear that the subsection is material: it is a composition, formal or truncated. An example of material composition: negligence (part 1 of article 293 of the Criminal Code), under which aggravating circumstances are absent. Here it is necessary to establish as a criminal consequence the damage caused on a large scale, a significant violation of the legitimate interests and rights of organizations or citizens or the interests of society, the state, protected by law. If aggravating circumstances are present (part 2 of the same article), this means causing serious harm to health or even death of a person caused by imprudence. If there are particularly aggravating circumstances (part 3 of the same article) - causing death to two or more people through negligence.

An example of the formal composition does not indicate the specific consequences, there will be enough inaction or actions provided for in the article of the Criminal Code. The consequences are usually beyond the scope of this crime, and if they do exist, they are taken into account when imposing punishment. For example, the composition of obstruction by the right to vote or interference in the work of election commissions. Truncated compounds are a form of formal, just the end of the act is transferred to the early stage of the crime. For example, robbery (art. 162) is formulated as an attack aimed at theft of property where violence dangerous to health and life is used, or the threat of such violence. Robbery is a completed crime from the first moment of the attack. The end of his law was postponed at the time of the assassination attempt, when the mastery of another's property had not yet taken place.