Criminal involvement in juvenile suicide: comparative and legal analysis of legislations of Russia, CIS and Baltic States

This article analyses the specificity of the regulation of liability for such forms of criminal involvement in juvenile suicide, as forcible suicide, incitement to suicide and assistance in suicide in the criminal legislations of Russia, the CIS countries and the Baltic States. The author does not not aim at assessing the criminal legislation of Russia and the near abroad in terms of regulating the investigated acts, but attempts to identify various approaches to its solution. The focus is laid on the terminology, description of objective features in the constructions of the crimes in question, as well as means for differentiating criminal liability for their commission. The conducted research leads to the conclusion that criminal legislations of all the CIS and Baltic states provide for liability for criminal involvement in suicide (attempted suicide). The preventive possibilities of criminal law are related to forcible suicide, incitement to suicide and assistance in suicide. However, they do not contain the definition of suicide. Neither does the Russian criminal legislation. The article focuses on the concept of forcible suicide, which has not received the proper legal formulation in any of the criminal legislations of the countries under consideration. These legislations determine only the ways of committing this crime, including abuse of the victim or regular humiliation of their personal dignity, bullying, threats, harassment, slander or insult on the part of the perpetrator, coercion to unlawful acts, and blackmail. The criminal legislations of the CIS member states understand incitement to suicide as affecting a person's determination to commit suicide, if this person has committed or attempted suicide. The Criminal Codes of the Republic of Armenia and the Republic of Belarus do not specify the methods of committing this crime, while the criminal legislations of the Kyrgyz Republic and Turkmenistan refer to persuasion, deception or some other methods, that is, the list is open. The minor's age of the victim qualifies the commission of such a crime as forcible suicide only in the criminal legislations of the Republic of Moldova, the Republic of Belarus, the Kyrgyz Republic, Turkmenistan, the Republic of Tajikistan and Ukraine. The same qualifying feature can be found in the incitement to suicide only in the Criminal Code of the Republic of Belarus. The legislator of Turkmenistan and the Republic of Lithuania criminalised incitement to suicide and forcible suicide in their Criminal Codes in a single legal norm. In conclusion, the author finds it sensible to borrow from foreign codes the idea of criminalising such forms of criminal involvement in juvenile suicide as forcible suicide and incitement to suicide in a single legal norm in order to improve the national criminal legislation.

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