Problematic Aspects Of Criminal-Legal Characteristic Of Hate Crimes
Keywords:
criminal-legal characteristics, racial, national, religious intolerance, competition of criminal-legal norms.Abstract
The norms of the current Criminal Code of Ukraine concerning intolerance are analyzed in the article. Most of them are about crimes committed on the grounds of racial, national or religious intolerance. The analysis of criminal-legal norms of the General and Special Parts of the Criminal Code of Ukraine have provided an opportunity to disclose other formulations that are similar in content but different in form and have significantly expanded the understanding of the concept of intolerance in the Criminal Code of Ukraine. The article stipulates that the provisions provisions enshrined in paragraph 3 of Part 1 of Art. 67 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine after the amendments do not comply with similar provisions provided in the Articles of the Special Part of the Criminal Code of Ukraine, in particular as qualifying and especially qualifying features.
It is substantiated that the construction «committing a crime on the ground» is to some extent not legal. This is more of a social category. The «ground» for the commission of a crime is outside the scope of the crime and cannot characterize neither its subjective nor objective side.
Criminal-legal characteristics of corpus delicti that in one way or another contain references to racial, national, religious or other forms of intolerance has shown the need to make amendments to the current criminal law in order to ensure the unity of its application, which are actually proposed in this article. The use of different terms and concepts to define the same phenomenon is not permissible in criminal law, so the article proposes certain solutions to eliminate such inconsistencies.
It is also proposed to address certain issues of qualification of these corpus delicti. In articular, it is proposed to resolve the issue of competition between these norms and the qualification for multiple crimes by introducing a separate section in the General Part of the Criminal Code of Ukraine where it is necessary to provide specific rules of qualification to overcome the competition of criminal-legal norms and address issues related to crimes.
