Violence against minors: concept and types

Abstract

Protecting children from violent criminal offenses that infringe on their life, health, morality and sexual inviolability is a priority national security task that unites the efforts of the family, the state and civil society. Domestic violence against minors has characteristic features related to the specifics of the mechanism of committing criminal offenses, the causes and conditions that determine it, the personality of the perpetrators, and the peculiarities of the victim’s behavior, which must be taken into account when developing special prevention measures. The analysis of legislation and specialized literature leads to the conclusion that today there is No. single approach to the definition of a number of the most important concepts related to the topic of this study. This primarily concerns the concepts of “family” and “violence”. The concept of “violence” is now widely used not only in everyday life, but is also included in the terminology of various sciences. Philosophy, psychology, criminal law, criminology, forensics and other sciences approach the problem of defining the concept of “violence” independently, without using existing definitions in related fields. The definition of violence may vary depending on the purpose of its use. This is due to the fact that violence itself has a rather “broad format”. It is a social and legal phenomenon that is not limited to the criminal law. In other words, violence can include criminal offenses, administrative offenses, as well as other forms of behavior that are not formally torts, but contradict generally accepted and approved norms of behavior, forming the prerequisites for violent crime as such. In this regard, it is necessary to clarify that in the context of this study, only the criminal law concept of violence will be used, assessed from the standpoint of criminal law as an offense and, accordingly, possessing all its features. Such a concept is necessary for a clear definition of the subject of research and its use to distinguish related issues in the process of studying empirical material.