Under public danger in criminal law is meant one of the main signs of a crime - damage. It can be caused both by the constitutional rights of citizens (including the most important right - to life), and the security of the state, its economic interests, public order, ecology, morality.
Instructions
Step 1
Some lawyers believe that public danger is an inherent feature of less dangerous offenses than causing damage, which are punished administratively rather than criminal.
Step 2
What is the specificity of the social danger of crimes? Various types of crimes differ from each other in severity and, accordingly, in social danger. It is clear even to a person inexperienced in jurisprudence that robbery is a more dangerous crime than, for example, theft or hooliganism. And murder, committed without extenuating circumstances, is a much more dangerous crime than the same robbery. Therefore, the severity of responsibility for crimes of different social danger should also be different. This is directly stated in part 3 of article 60 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation: "When assigning a punishment, the nature and degree of social danger of the crime is taken into account."
Step 3
It is the degree of public danger that is one of the main factors that makes it possible to differentiate crimes into “simple”, “with aggravating circumstances” and “with extenuating circumstances”. And to assess the degree of danger and, accordingly, classify a crime into one of the above categories, it is necessary to take into account a number of factors: the object of the crime, the amount of damage caused, the criminal's motivation, the degree of his guilt (if the crime was committed by a group of persons), etc. An accurate assessment of the degree of public danger can be given only after a thorough study of all these factors, as well as taking into account mitigating or aggravating circumstances.
Step 4
In what cases the public danger of a crime does not entail criminal liability? Article 77 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation provides that a person who has committed a crime may be released from criminal liability if either this person or the act committed by him has ceased to be socially dangerous. There are similar norms in the criminal legislation of many other countries. This happens if the criminal law "lags behind" the realities of life, and acts that were considered socially dangerous until recently have now firmly entered the life of a significant majority of society. For example, in the last years of the existence of the USSR, norms were still in force that punished speculation or the purchase and sale of foreign currency. In reality, they turned a blind eye to this, and in rare cases, if the case nevertheless reached the court, the accused were released from responsibility.
