“Inconsequent Carelessness” in Modern Conditions of Criminal Legislative Reform: The Problem and Ways to Solve it

Abstract

The article highlights the problem of inconsistency of legislative provisions on careless forms of guilt,which are contained in the General Part of the Criminal Code of Ukraine, to the constructive peculiarity ofcriminal offenses that are provided by the Special Part of this Code.The author draws attention to the problem which emerged due to the future transfer of a significantnumber of criminal offenses from the Code of Ukraine on Administrative Offenses to the book of criminaloffenses of the new Criminal Code of Ukraine. The vast majority of these offenses are constructed so as tohave a formal composition, to wit the consequences outside it. At the same time, the construction of acareless form of guilt and its varieties, recklessness and negligence, the normative models of which arecontained in the General Part of the draft Criminal Code of Ukraine, provides for a mental attitude to theconsequences.It is substantiated that the developers of the draft of the new Criminal Code of Ukraine will have todecide on one of the two directions of the system: either to completely abandon the criminalization ofinconsequent carelessness, leaving the legislative concept of carelessness covering only criminal offenseswith material composition, or to agree with the idea of presence of the inconsequent carelessness within theinstitute of criminal offense.Future problems with determining the form of guilt of criminal offenses are shown, if among theprovisions of the General Part of the projected Criminal Code of Ukraine there is a provision on the limitedpunishment of a careless behavior.The principle of constructing norms on criminal liability for careless acts is proposed, according towhich resultative careless delicts should be provided in the book of crimes, and careless offenses with aformal composition should be misdemeanors.In order to properly cover the provisions of the General Part of the future Criminal Code of Ukraine onthe carelessness of all constructive types of careless offenses, the author proposes to provide two types ofcareless form of guilt: resultative carelessness and inconsequent carelessness.Theoretical modeling of the relevant criminal law norms has been carried out, which will consolidate theinconsequent carelessness and its varieties.