CERTAIN ISSUES OF CRIMINAL LAWBREAKING SUBJECT UNDER THE NEW CRIMINAL CODE IN DRAFT
Authors: Burdin Volodymyr 
Published: August 2022

The active processes of judicial and law-enforcing systems reformation, as well as of the system of legislation take place in Ukraine. These processes are determined both by internal and external factors, particularly by European integration processes that demand the profound rethinking the standing legislation and bringing it into conformity with the European standards. Due to the abovementioned, the Commission on the issues of legal reform was set up under the President’s of Ukraine Decree No. 584/2019 of August 7, 2019. Several working groups were created within this Commission, and they are aimed at reforming the legislation in different fields. Among these groups, the group on the issues of criminal legislation reformation functions, as well. Among the other tasks, it shall ensure drafting and submitting the agreed proposals on reforming the legal system of Ukraine considering the contemporary challenges and needs of democratic society to the President of Ukraine; in particular, it goes about preparation and generalization of proposals concerning the amendments to the legislation on criminal liability. The working group members, including the leading scholars in the field of criminal law who represent the different higher education establishments, set themselves an ambitious task – to draft the new criminal code. The article deals with the new criminal code in draft provisions concerning the subject of criminal lawbreaking. The author attempts to elucidate the novels proposed during the discussion of the draft that, at the same time, were not included into its content. Primarily, it should be emphasized that there are no radical amendments concerning the subject of criminal lawbreaking, although there were quite rigorous discussions of the newly proposed provisions within the working group. Probably it can be stated that it is this section that has been the least amended if compared to the standing version of the Criminal Code of Ukraine. It means that the physical and sane person that achieved the age from which under criminal code the criminal liability may arise is still considered to be the subject of criminal lawbreaking. Concerning the proposals being discussed primarily, it is worth mentioning the one related to the unification and reducing the general age of criminal liability to fourteen years. The fact is that diversification of the information sources, their openness and availability to the young generation permit us to affirm that nowadays teenagers are more intellectually developed than their peers were a few decades ago. However, the mentioned proposal in general was not supported by the majority of the working group members considering the fact that society is hardly ready to accept such an aggravation of criminal liability of minors and the factual widening the criminalization sphere. The working group considered the proposal on widening the causes of insanity, as well. The concept of insanity and understanding its causes only as the mental disorders or illnesses belong to the most traditional provisions for national criminal law. This leads to the fact that the insanity of a person is related only to a mental disorder or illness, and sometimes is even equated with them. At the same time, it is obvious that the mental activity of a person may be influenced and altered not only by the mental disorders, but also by the other factors of both external and internal character, and such changes do not necessarily possess the pathological and morbid character. Although with the serious objections, but the new approach to the criminal liability for the criminal lawbreakings committed under intoxication still was accepted by the majority of the working group members. Firstly, it was proposed to solve the issue, whether the person`s intoxication arouse of his/her free will or not. And only in case of the so-called voluntary and conscious intoxication, a person shall be held criminally liable on the general grounds.