About the necessity of legislative regulation of criminal responsibility for vandalism

Abstract

In today's world, there is a growing number of cruelty and violent manifestations, which harms the legitimate interests of the individual, the state and society. Vandalism and the crimes connected with it are one of such manifestations. With the development of society and the emergence of modern human capabilities, acts of vandalism are changing and gaining new forms.

            The necessity for isolation and consideration of vandalism and connected crimes is due to the fact that vandals committed in public places acquire a special anti-social color and negative social significance.

            The purpose of the article is to prove the necessity of legislative regulation of vandalism as a criminal act, as well as to bring arguments about the importance of introducing amendments to the Criminal Code of Ukraine.

            At the moment, in the domestic legislation there is no legal definition of the concept of vandalism, which leads to a mixed understanding of the range of acts connected by its features, and also whether there are actions related to vandalism, criminal. The importance of criminalizing vandalism is due to the fact that the number of acts of vandalism in Ukraine is increasing year by year and its newly modified forms are constantly appearing.

            Vandalism is a form of aggressive unlawful behavior that manifests itself in deliberate acts, the consequence of which is causing harm to any property, religious, cultural or spiritual values, objects of improvement of settlements, transport infrastructure, committed with cynicism and / or obvious disrespect for society in a public place. The criminal law manifestations of vandalism in Ukraine, that is, to such behavior, which manifests this phenomenon in the objective reality, include acts stipulated by various sections of the Special Part of the Criminal Code of Ukraine which are not singled out in a separate article or part thereof. In addition, the activity associated with the unauthorized graffiti application is generally uncriminalized. According to the statistics of the General Prosecutor’s Office of Ukraine on the state of crime and the results of the prosecutorial and investigative activities, each year it accounts for 1-1.5% more crimes connected with vandalism.

            At the same time, in connection with the lack of a normative basis for combining these acts into a single set of crimes, one can assume that it is expedient to commit a crime with a vandal purpose to recognize the circumstances which aggravates the punishment. This conclusion is explained by the fact that there is now an urgent need for legislative definition of vandalism, the elimination of difficulties in qualifying such acts, the display in official statistical reporting and the assignment of guilty to just and proportionate punishment. A crime with a vandal purpose will be understood as constituting the subjective part of the crime associated with the realization of the desire to cause damage to any property, religious, cultural or spiritual values, objects of improvement of human settlements, transport infrastructure, etc. located in a public place. , and for the sake of achieving such a goal, the person performs a socially dangerous act.

            The proposed changes to Criminal law will be an important step in the criminalization of acts related to vandalism, the inclusion of these unlawful actions in official statistical reporting in order to analyze their dynamics, involving the investigated manifestation in criminological problems that require scientific study, analysis of causes and conditions its existence, as well as the improvement of existing ones.