Criminally punishable acts under the criminal legislation of the Republic of Poland and Ukraine: a comparison of the content and scope of the relevant concepts

Abstract

The article is devoted to the research of the issues of legislative regulation and correlation of the content and scope of the concepts used in the legislation of the Republic of Poland and Ukraine to determine criminal offences, namely the terms: ‘przestępstwo’, “zbrodnią”, “występek” and “criminal offence”, “crime” and “criminal misdemeanour” with an emphasis on the translation of the relevant terms, and their meaning.
The authors emphasise that a comparative legal study of Ukrainian legislation with the legislation of other States should be based on a correct and accurate translation of the terminology of foreign legislation into Ukrainian, taking into account the terminology of national law. At the same time, a literal translation of the terms: ‘przestępstwo’, “zbrodnią”, and “występek” is not always an accurate meaning of the content of the analysed concepts.
It is argued that the most accurate and adequate translation and understanding of the terms is: ‘przestępstwo’ as “criminal offence”, “zbrodnia” as “crime”, and “występek” as “criminal misdemeanour”.
The authors identify the common and different approaches of the legislators of both states to the definition of types of ‘przestępstwa/criminal offences’. In particular, it is common that crimes and misdemeanours are distinguished by the type and extent of punishment provided for in the sanction of the article for the relevant unlawful act (although the relevant limit is different). The difference in the definition of ‘przestępstwa/criminal offence’ is that the Criminal Code of Ukraine defines the concept of criminal offence statutorily and sets out its elements (corpus delicti), which is not the same in the legislation of the Republic of Poland. Instead, in the Criminal Code of the Republic of Poland, the distinction between crimes and misdemeanours is also conducted by the form of guilt, which is absent in the Criminal Code of Ukraine.