The grounds for criminalization and decriminalization of acts

The grounds constitute the main factor for criminalization and decriminalization of acts because primarily, they characterize the necessity to change criminal legislation. In scientific literature the researchers define the grounds for criminalization in different ways. However, they all think that it is necessary to take into account the public danger of an act. The concept of public danger in legal science has been formed according to the harm of those acts which were later considered to be criminal. Public danger means that the act is harmful to society. The act is dangerous, not from the viewpoint of legislators, but because it is in conflict with the normal conditions of life accepted in this society. Being the grounds for criminalization and decriminalization, public danger is very complicated for both legal and material estimation. Scientific literature separates some structural elements of public danger and the factors which lie outside the structure, but influence the character and degree of public danger. The former group of factors constitutes the content of public danger and serves as the ground for criminalization of an act. The latter group shows what specifies public danger in the elements of structure. Public danger of an act is determined by the object of infringement and its objective aspect. The subject and objective aspect if an act are not key parameters in relation to its public danger. Most researchers think that two criteria determine the public danger of an act: its character and degree. The character determines whether there is danger to the public in a committed act in principle (it whether it causes any harm or not).The degree determines the range of legal measures to be applied to a law-breaker (it is determined whether the act is criminal or not).The article deals with the process of defining public danger under the system of new public relations or when the old ones are changed. It has been noted that a criminalized act should be more or less spread. This means that is that the act cannot be a universal one or be extremely widely spread. Furthermore, it should not be a sporadic act without any possibility to be repeated in the future. The author comes to the conclusion that the grounds for criminalization represent an increasing (high) degree of public danger of an act. This means that, as a rule, crimes bring more serious harm to any society, threaten it to a greater extent and are more intolerant in it than other offences. It is due to this harm that such offences are called crimes. To find dangerous crimes criminal, it is necessary for them to inflict such a harm to public relations which violates the conditions for the existence of a definite system of public relations.

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