Features of criminal liability of persons with mental anomalies: foreign experience

Abstract

Annotation: Despite the rather large number of works devoted to the study of the characteristic features of mental anomalies, which do not exclude criminal prosecution, the peculiarities of criminal prosecution of such persons, a number of insufficiently solved problems remain. In the criminal law of a number of countries, the liability of persons with mental anomalies has long been regulated within the institution of limited sanity. And in this aspect, the study of foreign experience in the legislative regulation of this institution is necessary. The purpose of the study is to study the rules of foreign criminal law, which determine the features of criminal liability of persons with mental anomalies, and compare them with the relevant rules of criminal law of Ukraine. Among the countries whose criminal law provides for limited sanity for persons with mental anomalies, there are two conditional approaches to the criminal liability of persons with mental anomalies (mental disorders) in accordance with the legal family: England-American and Romano-Germanic. In the vast majority of countries of the Romano-Germanic legal family, whose criminal law defines the specifics of the responsibility of persons with mental anomalies (limited sanity), criteria such as medical (mental anomaly or disorder) and psychological (lack of awareness and / or control of their actions). The criminal law of the England-American legal family does not have a clear definition of the concept, criteria and consequences of the state of limited sanity in the subject of the crime. The criminal legislation of Ukraine on determining the features of criminal liability of persons with mental anomalies in the form of their legislative definition corresponds to the legislation of the Romano-Germanic legal family. The legal criterion of limited sanity, which is defined in the theory of criminal law, should be called psychological, because it is an intellectual-volitional manifestation of behaviour, not legal. It may be legal to establish a medical and psychological criterion of limited sanity in the relevant norm with an emphasis on the criminal consequences that will have a mental anomaly on the criminal liability of such an entity.