Legal regulation of liability for offenses related to inducement to suicide: Domestic and foreign experience

Abstract

In this work, a team of authors tried to analyze the current state of legal regulation of acts related to suicide under Russian and foreign criminal legislation. For this, historical, comparative legal, comparative and systemic-structural methods were used. The study reflects the evolution of beliefs about suicide. It is noted that the legislation of more than 160 countries contains provisions on liability for criminal involvement in the suicide of another person. More than 38 legal systems do not mention suicide as a criminal institution. Particular attention is paid to five groups of crimes associated with suicide. The first group includes responsibility for attempted suicide, which is punishable in more than 24 countries around the world. The following contains a wide list of acts related to the inducement of suicidal behavior in the form of: driving to suicide or attempted suicide, inducement to commit suicide (incitement) or assistance in committing it (assistance, aiding, advice, consultation). The third group is made up of norms that consider these acts as one of the types of murder or incitement to it. The fourth group contains corpus delicti with responsibility for disseminating information about methods of committing suicide, promoting suicide and public calls for its implementation. The last group contains privileged compounds with responsibility for euthanasia. The article reveals the features of new types of criminal activity carried out by spreading suicidal ideology on the Internet, persuading children and adolescents to commit suicide by negative information impact and drawing them into computer games that pose a threat to life and health. The article reflects the relationship of suicide with cyberbullying, cyber-harassment, as well as with the illegal activities of destructive criminal organizations (sects), extremism and terrorism. The necessity of further improvement of criminal law mechanisms for protecting individuals from criminal encroachments and anti-suicidal measures is substantiated.