Socio-legal conditioning of the differentiation of criminal responsibility for corruption offenses

Abstract

The article states that it is advisable to consider the problem of social and legal validity of differentiation of criminal responsibility for corruption criminal offenses in two planes: external and internal.
 In order to establish very specific restrictions on the use of incentive criminal law measures against persons who have committed corruption criminal offenses, the legislator needed an appropriate tool: the definition of the concept of corruption criminal offense subsequently. This is due to the separation in the General part of the Criminal Code of Ukraine of a group of corruption criminal offenses and the legal consequences of their commission, which constitutes, conditionally speaking, an “external” differentiation of criminal liability. There are also legal reasons for the “external” differentiation of criminal responsibility for a corruption criminal offense, since the concept of “corruption offense” is defined in the Law of Ukraine on Prevention of Corruption (Part 1, Article 1), and corruption crimes are generally conventional and have a relatively autonomous existence determined by the provisions of international law, those documents ratified by Ukraine.
 The first step of the “internal” differentiation of criminal liability for corruption criminal offenses is determined by legal factors - the definition of the concept of “corruption” in the Law of Ukraine “On Prevention of Corruption”. The next step of “internal” differentiation is to take into account the types of special subjects of corruption criminal offenses and those spheres of social relations in which they participate and may abuse their powers or receive undue benefits. The reasons for such a differentiation seem to lie in the differences in the relations in which the above-mentioned special subjects are participants. The legislator, differentiating responsibility taking into account these spheres, firstly, determines the place of the article on the corruption criminal offense in the structure of the Special Part of the Criminal Code of Ukraine, and secondly, taking into account the importance of the relevant relations, constructs independent sanctions of criminal law norms.