Criminal-legal Meaning of the Notion Public Danger

Abstract

For the purpose of comprehensive analysis of public danger as a sign of a crime, the author has investigated its criminal-legal estimation in the social and legal consciousness, rule-making procedures and application of the law.Particular attention is paid to clarifying the following questions: whether public danger is characteristic and applicable only to the crimes or some other offenses too, for instance, antisocial offenses, which are governed by the norms of morality; whether public danger is the autonomous basis for criminal responsibility, one of the two, along with the offense itself or it is not a ground for criminal responsibility in general; the impact of public danger on realization of such principles as justice, equality, legality, as well as humanism and guilt. In addition, the article discusses the notion public danger as the basis for the criminalization and decriminalization of criminal actions and as a basis for the classification of offenses in accordance with a degree of severity, where severity index serves as a model of public danger of the crime, which is reflected in the sanctions of the criminal-legal norms. The degree of severity is also considered to be an index of individual public danger, which is taken into account in the context of the individualization of criminal responsibility. Thus, on the one hand, the typical severity of the crime is the most powerful tool for differentiation of criminal responsibility, but on the other – individual severity index represent individual level of public danger in every specific crime and is taken into account by the court at sentencing, release from criminal liability, release from punishment or imprisonment.