Unforeseen Circumstances in Criminal Law, Criminal Policy and Criminology: Statement of the Problem

In the methodological sense, the criminal law, criminal policy and criminological sciences are characterized by a stable adherence to the worldview in which the regularities, determinism and predictability act as basic starting points for almost all theoretical constructions and practical solutions. Meanwhile, the modern world with its increasing uncertainty and unpredictability is challenging the established constructions and views, thus forcing the researchers to include the principles and categories originating from chance, probability, and unpredictability into the methodological arsenal of their political-legal studies. This challenge has not yet been fully comprehended in the field of theoretical cognition of crime counteraction, and thus the topic of unforeseen circumstances can be considered to be novel for this sphere. Already at the level of problem statement, it is possible to outline some significant directions of research analysis. Firstly, it is the research of the concept, nature and contents of unforeseen circumstances, of their correlation with accidental circumstances, and the establishment of their place in the system of criminological and criminal policy determinants and consequences. Secondly, it is the research of the content and role of unforeseen circumstances in criminal law, both from the standpoint of their influence on the contents of guilt and responsibility of a person who committed a crime, and the standpoint of the organization of an effective system of enforcing criminal law and minimizing mistakes, including accidental ones. Thirdly, it is the analysis of the role of unforeseen circumstances in criminology, including accidental factors determining crimes at the individual and the sociological levels. Fourthly, it is the research of unforeseen and accidental factors influencing criminal policy decisions, including personal characteristics of political leaders as well as accidental and unpredictable consequences of the development and implementation of the criminal policy course. The information of all these factors should be an obligatory component of the comprehensive knowledge of the problems of crime determination and crime prevention in the conditions of the exponentially increasing influence of unforeseen circumstances as a pre-condition for the development of effective anti-criminal strategies on the basis of risk-management technologies.