Domestic And American Model Of Sanctions For Criminal Violations In The Economic Field: Critical Approach By A Comparativist

Abstract

The article critically reviews the models of criminal sanctions introduced in Ukraine and the United States for economic criminal offenses. It is emphasized that the meaning of the concept of punishment is inextricably linked to the fundamental category of criminal liability, which means the restrictions provided by criminal law for the exercise of the rights and freedoms of a person for committing a criminal offense.

It has been noted that most American courts do not practice “linear” philosophy in terms of sentencing, but on the contrary, take the whole set of unique facts and circumstances with legal significance into account in each criminal case. It has been established that this approach partially resembles the content of paragraph 3, part 1 of Art. 65 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine: the court imposes punishment, taking into account severity of the crime, identity of the perpetrator as well as mitigating and aggravating circumstances.

It has been also established that in comparison with the American domestic practice of sentencing in general and for economic crimes in particular seems unreasonably humane, such that it is not able to fully implement the purpose of punishment, declared in Art. 50 of the Criminal Code, and therefore, such as objectively unable to restrain the manifestations of illegal behavior in the economic sphere. The large- scale humanization of criminal liability for economic encroachments carried out by the Ukrainian legislator at the end of 2011, combined with the decriminalization of certain acts and the replacement of imprisonment with fines in sanctions of other norms, has intensified such negative trend.

Third, the analysis of the content and application of the federal Penal Code demonstrates not only the advantages of this act of the federal criminal law, but also its individual shortcomings. There is a lot of criticism against this document’s provisions in terms of sentencing for economic crimes. The main reason for criticism is the purely arithmetic relationship between the amount of punishment and the amount of material damage caused by such a crime.

Based on the results of elaboration of the American experience in terms of normative provision and practice of application of punishments for economic crimes, a position has been expressed on the expediency of introducing a model of limited formalization of punishments in Ukraine.