The Structure of Public Danger and the Basis for Recognizing the Act as Insignificant

Abstract

Difficulties in the process of criminal law enforcement are caused not only by the establishment of all the signs of a crime, but also by the assessment of the entire act as a whole in order to determine its public danger. In theory and in practice, they mainly refer to court decisions recognizing or denying the possibility of recognizing an act as insignificant, which leads to subjectivism in the process of applying criminal law norms and entails non-recognition of socially dangerous actions as a crime and the release of the perpetrator from punishment or, conversely, unjustified conviction of the person who committed the act, although containing all the signs of a crime, but not socially dangerous. The purpose of the study is to concretize the concept of public danger; the objectives of the study are to consider the structure of public danger, as well as the influence of the content of objective and subjective signs of an act on its recognition as insignificant. To solve the designated goals and objectives of the study, the author used the following methods: the study of documents (court decisions), systematization and generalization of various positions regarding the concept of public danger. According to the author, in order to exclude the unjustified application of Part 2 of Article 14 of the Russian Criminal Code, the law enforcer must take into account the structure of public danger, which is characterized by public harm — actually caused harm or the threat of causing it (depending on the object, consequences and method of the crime), as well as the threat of committing a new crime, determined by motive, purpose, as well as behavior persons before the commission of the crime. When assessing an act that contains the elements of a crime provided for by the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, the courts do not need to establish the existence of a public danger of the deed, since it is presumed, but on the contrary, they must establish and cite the circumstances indicating its absence.