General Sentencing Principles as a Guarantee of Respect for the Perpetrators’ Rights

Abstract

The paper deals with the sentencing principles having not only theoretical but also practical significance because only in case of compliance with the general principles, the sentence applied to a perpetrator will not only be formally legal but also just and precisely substantiated. The objective of the research is to define the effect of the sentencing principles for the protection of the perpetrators’ rights in the law enforcement practice, i.e. whether these principles guarantee the respect for the rights of this category of people. The topicality of this problematics is defined as theoretically and practically significant both at the national and at the international level because sentencing principles, as it was already mentioned above, allow avoiding fatal mistakes in sentencing, which will result in a higher effectiveness of the national criminal law and will contribute to the creation of a more substantiated and harmonized international criminal law. The analysis of the essence of these principles will allow defining the rationale and necessity of the use of sentencing principles in the law enforcement practice, as well as the influence of the principles on the respect for the perpetrators' rights, freedoms, and legal interests in the national and international legal processes.