CRIME AS A VIOLATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS

Abstract

Relevance of the research. The close substantive and functional connection between human rights and a crime forms a complex research subject, though its study is not given sufficient attention in the domestic literature. On the one hand, the concept of human rights violations includes acts that are not always criminalized, on the other hand, not all crimes can be regarded as violations of human rights. Meanwhile, the criminal law is recognized as a universal instrument of protecting human rights, and therefore it must take into account these features of offenses in the mechanism of its functioning. Purpose of the research. The relevant task of this publication is to define a differentiated analysis of the mechanism for the formation of a criminal-legal prohibition on committing dangerous acts, depending on whether they infringe or not infringe on the fundamental rights and freedoms of citizens. Research results. Acts that infringe on fundamental human rights and freedoms are subject to mandatory criminalization. The unlawfulness of such acts is determined precisely by the fact that they violate the general constitutional provisions on the inadmissibility of encroachments on fundamental rights and freedoms. Acts that do not infringe on fundamental human rights and freedoms can be criminalized in accordance with the discretion of the legislator. The establishment of a criminal law prohibition in this case is preliminarily mediated by the construction of sectoral legal restrictions for the relations protected by the criminal law. Such sectoral legal restrictions are subject to the requirements of Part 3 of Art. 55 of the Constitution of the Russian Federation and can be expressed in two of their main forms: either as a complete prohibition of a certain right (freedom), or as a decrease in the options for possible, permissible behavior by establishing various limits of such behavior by state authorities. A differentiated analysis of the mechanism of criminalization of acts, depending on their correlation with violation of human rights, proves that the criminal law itself, formally confirming in the dispositional part, the restriction of the rights of law-abiding citizens, in reality does not restrict them, since the grounds for such a restriction lie outside the criminal law.