Punishment for the crime provided for in Art. 134 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine: an overview of some problematic issues

Abstract

The research paper provides a critical review of the lawmaker's model of criminal penalties for illegal abortion or sterilization (Article 134 of the Criminal Code). In particular, it is argued that the concept of criminal liability is complex and in its content includes both punishment and other measures of criminal law influence.
 It was also critically compared the models of sanctions implemented by the legislator in the current and previous editions of Art. 134 of the Criminal Code. It was established that, in general, the types and amounts of sanctions for the basic and qualified composition of illegal abortion remained unchanged. The difference was found only in the fact that earlier there was no provision for imprisonment for performing an abortion by a person without special medical education (part 1 of Article 134 of the Criminal Code) - instead, imprisonment for a term of up to two years is now legally established.
 During the implementation of the author's analysis of sanctions in the composition of Art. 134 of the Criminal Code, the classification developed by criminal law science was used, which allows to identify and systematize the main types of errors during the construction of sanctions of criminal law norms.
 Taking into account critical comments on the legislator's refusal to impose a penalty of deprivation of liberty in the sanction of Part 4 of Art. 134 of the Criminal Code is proposed, from the de lege ferenda positions, in the text of the sanction of the fourth part of Art. 134 of the Criminal Code after the words "up to five years” include the following wording: "or imprisonment for a term of up to three years”.
 Finally, the research led to propose an optimized model of sanctions in the first four parts of Art. 134 of the Criminal Code by officially referring to the minimum amount of the main types of punishments as follows: 1) in Part 2, restriction of liberty for a term of up to three years or deprivation of liberty for up to two years; 2) in Part 3, restriction of liberty for a period of three to five years or deprivation of liberty for two to five years; 3) in Part 4, restriction of liberty for a term of up to three years or deprivation of liberty for up to two years; 4) in Part 5, restriction of liberty for a period of two to five years or deprivation of liberty for two to five years.