Public Danger of an Act: Theoretical and Legal, Legislative and Law Enforcement Aspects

The article is devoted to one of the most complex categories of criminal law – public danger. The authors analyze the main approaches that have been developed in the science of criminal law regarding public danger and its impact on criminalization, the basis of criminal liability and law enforcement. It was established that the prevailing point of view is that the phenomenon under consideration reflects the real and potential ability of specific human behavior to create a danger for social relations that relate not only to the victim, but also to the entire society, in connection with which the state seeks to take it under control by establishing a criminal-legal prohibition and, if necessary, using the mechanism of criminal-legal repression. It is noted that public danger is historically variable, and being only a characteristic of the influence of human behavior on society, depends on an external assessment based on those socio-economic and political realities that have developed by a certain historical moment. The authors have found that social danger is not abstract and has a concrete expression in the form of certain criminal-legal formulas and phenomena: insignificance, basic, privileged and qualified compositions, sanctions, etc. The influence of social danger of an act on the formation of sanctions is noted, the dependence of the size and terms of punishment on those social values that are encroached upon by socially dangerous acts is revealed, while in the text of the criminal law there is an obvious imbalance in the protection of certain values. The patterns of legislative assessment of the social danger of acts that form the elements of crimes that encroach on several social relations at the same time are studied. It is stated that the main indicators of social danger are its nature and degree, which, in addition to the differentiation of criminal liability, are directly related to the distinction between crimes and other socially dangerous acts. A general conclusion is made about the primacy of social danger over criminalization and paralysis of acts due to its property to reflect the danger of human behavior.