What is a crime and its composition?Subjective and objective signs and their combination, established by criminal law, which characterize a criminal act dangerous for society, determine the basic meaning. The corpus delicti serves as the basis for incurring criminal liability. Criminal legislation of the Russian Federation does not disclose the concept itself; nevertheless, investigative and judicial practice, the theory of law, the Code of Criminal Procedure and the Criminal Code are quite widely used by it.
Elements and their meaning
The corpus delicti consists of only four elements:
a) the object of the crime to which the encroachment is directed (benefits, values, public relations, which should be protected by criminal law);
b) the objective side (that is, the very dangerousthe act, its external side, the consequences dangerous for the society and the obvious connection between the crime and the consequences; tools, method, means, time, situation, place where the crime was committed);
c) the subjective side (that is, whatis inside the committed crime: mental state, attitude of the criminal to the crime and its consequences: intention or negligence, purpose and motive, emotional state at the time of the act);
d) the subject of the crime (sane person at the age of criminal responsibility).
To conduct any kind of legal activity, each of the above elements is crucial.
The corpus delicti has also features that characterize these elements, they are also four groups:
a) those signs that characterize the object itself, the subject of the crime and the victim;
b) the characteristic of the objective side (the act and consequences of the crime, the causal link established between them, the time, the environment, the means, the method, the instruments and the place);
c) the subjective side also has its own characteristics: guilt, motive, emotions, purpose;
d) the characteristics of the subject (the responsibility of the individual, the age at which criminal liability is possible).
The attributes of each of the four elements are also fundamental. The corpus delicti has mandatory and optional elements.
Mandatory and optional
Required items must be available, andthe absence of at least one of them means the complete absence of the composition. The value of mandatory elements of a crime, including their objective side, should be composed of:
- The object of the crime.
- Inaction or action, the harmful effects directly related to inaction or action, and the relationship must be causal.
- Regarding the subject, the elements must have signs of a physically sane person and a certain age.
- Wines as intent or negligence.
The significance of the elements of a crime is huge, only they can determine the competence of criminal prosecution.
Optional elements are needed to construct the elements of a crime as additional to the main ones, they may become mandatory for the investigated composition and optional for the rest. For example:
a) regarding the object: the victim and objects;
b) from the objective side - place, situation, time, method, tools;
c) relative to the subject - a special subject;
d) from the subjective side - emotional state, purpose and motive.
The significance of the elements of a crime is truly great, since their presence will be the only argument for criminal liability.
Classification: degree of community and public danger
The composition of the crime in a significant waydiffer from each other, they can also be divided into four parts according to similar features. It is precisely with the definitions that the meaning of the crime is clarified. Their types are as follows.
1. The degree of generality in the systemic signs of crimes: general, generic, specific and specific compositions.
- The first consists of a set of features and elements that are present in all compositions, they are characterized by criminal acts.
- The second is the generalization of the characteristics of identical crimes, which indicates the signs inherent in the group of encroachments of the same section of the Criminal Code.
- The third composition is a legislative characteristic of crimes of certain groups.
- Fourth - the cumulative evidence of a crime of a specific criminal law.
2. The degree of public danger of the investigated crime indicates the basic, privileged and qualified compositions.
- The first - the main - contains the full setthe main (mandatory) subjective and objective characteristics of the composition, where the crime is clearly distinguishable and does not contain any aggravating or mitigating circumstances.
- The second composition is privileged, i.e.containing mitigating signs that indicate a lesser danger to the society of the act and serve as a basis for reducing the size of the punishment compared with punishments for crimes of the main part.
- A qualified composition is an act withaggravating circumstances, supplemented by specific signs of crime, which indicate a greater danger to the society of the act, and therefore entail a more severe punishment compared with the punishment of the main part.
Signs of the first two types show how great the significance of the crime. The types of them precisely distinguish the degree of punishment for the offenses committed.
Classification: description method and design features
Ways to describe in the laws of signs of compositionscrimes can be of three types: simple, complex and alternative. The first composition gives all the subjective and objective signs once, the complex contains additional signs or elements in quantitative terms, the alternative composition is a kind of complex, and its feature is that there is an indication of the options of a criminal act or mode of action, which are all at once or each individually determine the composition of the crime. Thus, this or that value of objective evidence of crime is manifested.
Design features of the object and its featuresobjective side - at the time of the end of the composition can be material, formal or truncated. In the first trainings, together with the deed a sign of a crime, the consequences go without fail, and the crimes themselves can be considered complete as soon as the consequences dangerous for the society stipulated by the laws occur. The formal composition has an indication of a purely dangerous action or inaction for society, which serves as the basis for responsibility, and it does not depend on the onset of the consequences of the action. The truncated corpus delicti (notion, meaning, signs) has such a construction that the crime is considered completed at an earlier stage - from the moment the act was committed, from the attempt or preparation for the criminal offense, and this does not depend on the completion of the planned.
Definitions
The category of crime for a long timewas used exclusively widely in practice, however, until recently, criminal law did not use this definition. The Criminal Code of the Russian Federation secured, finally, the decisive role of such a concept, although it did not give a clear definition. But this gap was filled with the theory of law.
Hence, the composition of the crime - it is providedin the hypotheses and dispositions of the criminal law and characterizing a specific socially dangerous act as a crime, subjective and objective elements (features) acting in the system. Here is the main definition: a system in which elements (features) are the meaning of a crime. It was already mentioned above that the crime consists of four subsystems: the object and its objective side, the subject and its subjective side. The significance of the elements of the crime is that they are all grounds for criminal liability. If at least one element is missing, criminal liability is not foreseen. For example, if a crime was committed by a deranged person, this is the absence of the subject of the crime.
Concept of legislation
Legislatively formulated in the CriminalCode of crime based on the study of current situations and the commission of certain actions of people who began to show growth trends, are undesirable and harmful from the point of view of the public. The criminal-legal significance of the crime is a code that is adequately built and faithfully reflects the entire system of relations taking shape in society, their distortions are especially dangerous, hampering public benefit activities and undermining justice.
The legislator is like a naturalist, notwho makes laws and does not invent them, but only to a formulator, who tries to express in conscious laws internal laws relating to spiritual relations. Similarly, the meaning of the crime in criminal law is expressed in the Criminal Code (Special Part), where one crime can be distinguished from another. For example, theft from extortion, robbery from hooliganism is distinguished only by different signs of the composition of these crimes.
In Russia
First, a little about Roman and English law.In ancient Rome, under the theft understood the violated right of ownership, including unpaid debt. English criminal law theft considers various methods of infringement on another's property, even if a person appropriated something found or cheated with electricity. And in Russia, criminal law concludes specific offenses, the list of which is exhaustive.
And that means criminal punishment andto recognize a crime can only behavior that coincides with the characteristics of this particular composition. The legal implications of a crime in the Criminal Code are reflected in the form of not all consecutive factual signs, but the most significant and typical subjective and objective, in the aggregate characterizing this act as socially dangerous.
Unfinished and completed offenses
In separate articles (Special part of the Criminal Code)describes the characteristics of a purely completed corpus delicti, which the perpetrators committed together with co-perpetrators or alone. Nevertheless, the General Part of the Criminal Code contains provisions for unfinished crimes, which include preparation or attempted crime.
The value of the subjective side of the compositioncrimes in that the General part describes the signs of both individual and peculiar to all crimes. When a person performed, for example, the functions of an instigator, organizer or accomplice and did not personally perform the actions of a crime, then the composition of the organization, instigation or complicity is considered in the act. For each criminal step has the corresponding signs.
Any crime can be characterized by the mostdifferent subjective and objective signs, features and features inherent only to him. Articles of the Criminal Code (Special Part) indicate only the most stable elements in structure and their constituent attributes: the object, the parties to the criminal act, both subjective and objective, after which the act is determined or not defined as a crime throughout the system. The significance of the objective side of a crime is important precisely because it deals with inaction or action, a consequence dangerous to society, circumstances of time and place, causal connections, circumstances, means and methods, tools for committing a crime - that is, signs that determine the composition.
Model
Only summarizing the characteristics of each composition.crime resistant signs, you can create some kind of scientific abstraction, constituting a general concept, which includes the above signs, all four of their groups (also called parties to the composition or its elements). They give a description of the object, its objective side, the subjective side and the subject of the crime. This model (concept) is usually used in educational institutions and has great methodological value. Since each side of the crime has its own specific characteristics, each of them is specific and unique in its own way.
In the general corpus delicti arenecessary, that is, mandatory for any composition, signs, as well as a number of individual, non-characteristic, optional. For example, a place, a time, a means, an instrument, methods of committing a crime, its consequences and the environment in which it all happens are far from being included in a certain corpus delicti, but inaction and action are an objective side, and its signs are simply required for each composition. However, the elements of the crimes are not specifically spelled out signs mandatory or optional in the Criminal Code (special part). Signs of such a plan are evaluative or formally defined, since they are described by verbal means — specific legal terms, concepts, well-known words.
Examples
There are several criteria, that is, grounds forwhich are classified crimes in the Criminal Code (special part). The number of mandatory signs of the objective side and the construction of the corpus delicti indicates a subsection: material is a composition, formal or truncated. An example of material composition: negligence (part 1 of article 293 of the Criminal Code), in which there are no aggravating circumstances. Here it is necessary to establish as a criminal consequence large-scale damage caused, substantial violation of the legitimate interests and rights of organizations or citizens or the interests of society, the state protected by law. If aggravating circumstances are present (part 2 of the same article), this means causing grievous bodily harm or even death of a person caused by negligence. If there are especially aggravating circumstances (part 3 of the article of the same) - causing death to two or more people by negligence.
An example of a formal composition for specificthe consequences does not indicate whether there is enough inaction or action provided for in the article of the Criminal Code. The consequences are usually outside this crime, and if they do exist, they are taken into account when sentencing. For example, the composition of the obstruction of electoral law or the creation of interference in the work of election commissions. Truncated formulations are a kind of formal, just the end of the act is transferred to the early stage of the crime. For example, robbery (Article 162) is formulated as an attack for the purpose of embezzlement of property, where violence threatening health and life is used, or the threat of such violence. Robbery - a completed crime from the first moment of the attack. The end of his law postponed to the time of the attempt, when the seizure of another's property has not yet taken place.
