The Value Of Criminological Expertise In Implementation Of Legislative Process

Abstract

The definition of crime and punishment has always been the prerogative of public authority.

A person should be guaranteed when punished for a certain act of behavior that the authorities will take into account the individual's needs at a particular historical stage and proceed from clear and understandable criteria for recognizing the crime.

Such criteria are: 1) the group of juridical and criminological grounds: public danger, relative prevalence and typicality; dynamics of crimes considering their determinants; possibility criminal law effect if other measures are useless and the power of criminal justice; 2) socio-economic grounds: caused damage; absence of negative consequences of criminal law prohibition and availability of material recourses for the realization of such prohibition; 3) socio-psychological grounds: the level of social justice and psychology, historical traditions.

The procedure of criminalization grounds establishment can be defined as “criminological expertise”.

Criminological expertise is an analytical research and assessment of the presence or absence of grounds for criminalization/decriminalization in order to resolve the problem of expediency, necessity and validity of installation / cancellation of criminal law prohibition.

Such expertise is advisable to be conducted before the drafting of the relevant regulatory act and not only lawyers, but expertise economists, sociologists, psychologists, historians should be attracted.

Criminological expertise should take a prominent place I the scientific support for the lawmaking process and serve as a guarantee of proper quality of criminal law making in accordance to the social and state needs in a relevant historical period.