Punishment for criminal offences against security activities: peculiarities of regulatory and legal certainty in the sanctions of the articles of the Special Part of the Criminal Code of Ukraine

Abstract

Based on the analysis of the doctrinal provisions and provisions of the current legislation of Ukraine, the author notes that certain sanctions of the main (basic) criminal offences against security activities have the following disadvantages 1) contradictory construction of sanctions of certain articles of the Special Part of the Criminal Code of Ukraine without taking into account the procedure and peculiarities of imposing certain types of punishment in relation to certain categories of persons (definition of such punishment as correctional labour in the sanctions of Part 1 of Article 381, Part 1 of Article 387 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine); 2) regulation in certain sanctions of the criminal law provisions under consideration of only one type of basic punishment (sanction of part 1 of Article 380 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine - imprisonment for up to five years; 3) the nature and degree of social danger of the criminal offence envisaged in the disposition of the article is not always taken into account in the construction of sanctions of the said criminal law prohibitions (an example of this shortcoming is the sanction of part 1 of Article 387 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine, since in case of violation of this prohibition only one punishment can potentially be individualised - a fine, the severity of which hardly corresponds to the degree of social danger of this unlawful encroachment; 4) sanctions for basic, qualified and especially qualified corpus delicti of criminal offences are not always consistent. For example, parts 2 and 3 of Art. 387 of the CC of Ukraine provide for the same minimum and maximum terms of mandatory additional punishment in the form of deprivation of the right to hold certain positions or engage in certain activities (up to three years) for different, depending on the degree of their social danger; 5) the problem of substitution in the sanctions of part 2 Art. 381, Art. 387, Art. 396(1) of the CC of Ukraine replacing the punishment in the form of arrest with the punishment in the form of probationary supervision.These shortcomings of regulatory and legal certainty in the sanctions for the mentioned main (basic) criminal offences against security activities need to be addressed either by clarifying criminal legislation in terms of regulating the relevant sanctions or by taking into account the recommendations made in this publication when imposing certain types of punishment for these criminal offences.