Crime in Ukraine in 2019-2024: level, structure, dynamics, forecasts

The study is devoted to studying the state of crime in Ukraine in the relatively peaceful years of 2019-2021 and the war years of 2022-2024, in their comparison, with the aim of predicting its state in 2025 and subsequent years. Against the background of data on the decrease in the population of Ukraine, statistical data of the Prosecutor General’s Office on the number of registered criminal offenses, criminal offenses for which proceedings were sent to court in general, as well as by their individual types, were analyzed. It is shown that although the Criminal Code of Ukraine has 410 articles containing the elements of criminal offenses, only a small part of them «works». Thus, 10% of articles are applied in 90% of cases, while the remaining 90% of articles account for only 10% of such cases. For violations of the principle of equality of all before the law, the most common cases sent to court with an indictment are criminal offenses committed by an ordinary person who has violated certain rules and which are easy to prove, and most rarely - about official, corruption and criminal offenses related to organized crime. It has been concluded that after the end of the war, the crime rate will generally decrease due to a sharp decrease in the number of military, military criminal offenses and premeditated murders. At the same time, the number of frauds, attacks on the reliability of information, criminal offenses in the sphere of trafficking in narcotic drugs, psychotropic substances and their analogues will increase. It is also likely that there will be more criminal offenses of a mercenary-violent and violent nature. In order to reduce the burden on the criminal justice system, increase the effectiveness of combating crime, and actually reduce its level, it is necessary to plan and take a number of measures in a timely manner. First of all, review the grounds for criminalizing some common acts that do not actually pose a public danger, more actively apply the means of administrative, disciplinary, and civil liability, and eliminate the shortcomings of criminal procedural legislation that contain loopholes for avoiding criminal liability.