The Legal Significance of Public Danger Posed by an Individual in Criminal Law and Procedure

The public danger posed by an individual has an independent legal significance. The study of historical and current regulatory acts, doctrinal sources and law enforcement practice allows us to conclude that there is a need for a more precise definition of the legal and criteria of the public danger posed by an individual, as well as its relationship to the public danger of an act. Despite its genetic and institutional connection to the theory of the dangerous state of a person, which was developed within the anthropological and sociological schools of criminology, the public danger posed by an individual serves as an important legal means of individualizing criminal liability. The paper presents arguments in support of the following theses: 1) the public danger posed by an individual, in isolation from the act committed by him, cannot be used as a criterion for criminalization and grounds for criminal liability; 2) the legal significance of the public danger posed by an individual lies in its influence on the individualization of criminal liability; 3) criteria of public danger posed by an individual that have independent legal significance include: characteristics of the crime committed; circumstances, characterizing the personality of the accused; the behavior of the person after the commission of the crime; 4) there are sufficient reasons for legislatively recognizing the loss of public danger posed by an individual as a ground for exemption from criminal liability, in relation to subjective discretionary grounds.

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