Age-Related Mental Incompetence and Its Criminal Law Consequences

The subject of this article is age-related insanity and its criminal consequences. The purpose of this work is to analyze such grounds for exemption from criminal liability as age insanity. The relevance of the work is due to the fact that when bringing the subject of a crime to justice, the state in which he committed a socially dangerous act is taken into account. The article indicates that the norm of age-related insanity in modern science and law enforcement practice causes a lot of disputes concerning both terminology and the very essence of the phenomenon under consideration. Some disagreements arise about the practical necessity of using age-related insanity in the aspect of distinguishing it from limited sanity. The article also analyzes age-related insanity, identifies criteria for its establishment, compares it with the institute of limited sanity, identifies problematic issues of their correlation and considers possible solutions.