Abstract
The author discusses criminal offences against public health under the Criminal Code of the Republic of Slovenia. In this Chapter of the Criminal Code, the object of protection under criminal law is human health, i.e. the health of both individuals and people in general as a common (general) value. Although criminal offences against public health are statistically insignificant in the author’s opinion, they are important for protecting human health as one of the most significant values protected by law. Given the rapid development of medicine, it may be expected that the need will arise in the future for some new incriminations. Modern law places an increasing importance on an injured person’s approval for interference with his or her body, which will lead to a different way of assessing the completeness of the essence of several criminal offences, referred to in this Chapter of the Criminal Code.
Highlights
Human health is one of the major basic rights protected by criminal law
The criminal offences covered by this Chapter of the KZ-1 account for 3.42 percent to 8.12 percent of the criminal offences processed by the courts in the Republic of Slovenia in the period 2000–2017
Criminal offences against public health are statistically insignificant, statistics alone are sometimes misleading and in this case such offenses are important for protecting human health as one of the most significant rights protected by law
Summary
Human health is one of the major basic rights protected by criminal law. not all countries act in the same way to ensure protection of these rights. If a physician is aware that failure to render medical assistance could cause the death of a patient and yet fails to provide such assistance even though he or she could have thereby saved the patient’s life, such an act could constitute a manslaughter under Article 116 This is a special criminal offence that can only be committed by a physician, other medical professional (nurse, midwife, medical technician, theatre nurse, etc.) or an alternative medicine practitioner who performs health care, i.e. licensed alternative medicine activity (Pitako, Valenčič, Korošec & Balažic, 2019: 96–97). No criminal offence is committed in the case of a legally approved programme of addiction treatment or the implementation of drug use control that is carried out or supervised by a public health authority (Deisinger, 2019: 344)
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