Legal Nature and Features a Continuing Crime

Abstract

The author singles out constituent features of a continuing crime: 1) a continuing crime, although legally completed, is happening continuously until its actual completion; 2) a continuing action has a complex two-element structure: the first element of the objective side of a continuing crime is the action or inaction of the guilty person that legally constitutes a crime, and the second element is the subsequent continuous behavior that «stretches» the objective side of the continuing crime in time; 3) a continuing crime is producing a non-stop destructive effect on the object of criminal law protection, and the long-term deformation of this object happens because of the action itself, not the consequences caused by it; 4) by committing a continuing crime, the person preserves conscious control over the action after its legal completion, regulates his behavior, controls the process of inflicting harm on the object of criminal law protection, which makes it possible to recognize the person as active (non-active) in the criminal law sense; 5) only a crime with a formal construct of corpus delicti can be continuing. The abovementioned features together could act as reliable criteria for determining the chronological boundaries of specific criminal actions, as a key to resolving theoretical disputes and law enforcement problems connected with classifying a certain action as continuing. The article stresses that the permanent character of a continuing crime cannot be explained through the prism of the theory of a continuing criminal condition. Such an interpretation of a continuing crime, common in Russian and foreign research, contradicts the established tenets of the classical theory of crime. Only an act in the form of action or inaction can be recognized as a continuing crime, but not a state, situation, or status. Based on this, the author gives a critical assessment of Art. 210.1 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation that provides for the liability for holding the highest position in a criminal hierarchy. The objective side of a continuing crime has the following manifestations: 1) continuing criminal inaction; 2) a crime legally completed by an action, and continuing through inaction; 3) continuing action. Based on this, the author states that the description of a continuing crime contained in the Decree of the Plenary Session of the Supreme Court of the USSR of March 4, 1929 No. 23 (edition of the Decree of the Plenary Session of March 14, 1963, No. 1) should be specified.