Intersectoral Differentiation of Responsibility in Criminal Law Rules Involving Administrative Prejudice Elements: Legislative and Law Enforcement Approaches

Abstract

Science considers the phenomenon of intersectoral differentiation of legal responsibility as the «fragmentation» of responsibility into separate types in a «vertical» manner. Proposals to consider the nature and/or degree of public danger as grounds or criteria for such differentiation acquire special significance in relation to the issue of distinguishing administrative and criminal responsibility in the light of acts involving elements of administrative prejudice. Since we are talking about related acts, only the degree of public danger, which at the same time has significance and grounds for criminalization, acts as such a basis. Proponents of the reasonable presence of the construction of administrative prejudice in the criminal law justify its occurrence in a re-committed offense either by a cumulative effect, subject to the mass dissemination of the relevant acts, or by the characteristics of the criminal’s personality, demonstrating his readiness for illegal behavior, including criminal one. We believe that both positions have the right to exist without being mutually exclusive. At the same time, the presence in the criminal law of a number of norms with signs of administrative prejudice is due more to considerations of expediency than to consideration of public danger, which is confirmed, in particular, by law enforcement data indicating non-application or single application. An address to the analysis of judicial practice suggests that at the level of law enforcement, the idea of intersectoral differentiation of administrative and criminal responsibility is not perceived, which manifests itself in underestimating the public danger of the criminal’s personality and violating the general logic of continuity of types of responsibility within their intersectoral differentiation.