Criminal and legal signs of a criminal organization: problems of theory and practice

Abstract

The article is devoted to the study of actual theoretical and practical problems related to the criminal-legal features of a criminal organization and the formation of scientifically based recommendations on the improvement of the current legislation and the practice of its application on this basis.It was established that in the definition of a criminal offense committed by an organized group contained in part 4 of Art. 28 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine, an error was made (instead of the word “it”, “he” was used), which should be eliminated by amending the law on criminal liability.It is argued that the definition of the purpose of creating a criminal organization needs to be clarified, since there cannot be a criminal organization that is created solely to ensure its functioning.It was established that, despite the fact that mandatory criminal law features of a criminal organization are defined in Part 4 of Art. 28 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine, in judicial practice (primarily in procedural documents) other signs of this organized criminal association are identified, in particular, specialization, plan of activity, rules of conduct, etc. These and other additional features are definitely characteristic of individual criminal organizations, but they first of all testify to the existence of their mandatory criminal law features, provided for in Art. 28 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine. Therefore, there is no need to recognize other signs as mandatory, as this will expand the scope of evidence, and therefore increase the burden on law enforcement officers, and may further complicate law enforcement activities. The indicated situation is probably due to the lack of legislative consolidation of the criminal-legal features of a criminal organization in the Criminal Code of Ukraine or another law, and therefore the problem should be solved by introducing legislative changes.