Strengthening criminal liability for committing property and some other offences under martial law in Ukraine

Abstract

The relevance of the chosen subject is dictated by the fact that countering criminal offences during the war is one of the most important problems that the legislator should respond to. Not only the level of the criminal situation in the state but also the effectiveness of the functioning of criminal law in general depends on how timely and correct decisions will be made in this area. The purpose of the study is to conduct a legal analysis of legislative initiatives to introduce new qualification circumstances, strengthen criminal liability by introducing new punishments and increasing the current sanctions for certain criminal offences. For this purpose, formal-logical, dialectical, logical-semantic, hermeneutical, comparative-legal, and other methods of scientific knowledge were used in the study. The study clarifies that legislative changes to strengthen responsibility for committing property and some other criminal offences under martial law are insufficiently justified and may lead to an excessive expansion of the current Criminal Code of Ukraine, a violation of its consistency. It is noted that this approach raises a number of doubts and requires the search for other, more effective ways of legal regulation. The expediency of applying a comprehensive approach in the formulation of criminal law norms, which provides for considering the tools of both the Special and General parts of the Criminal Code of Ukraine, is justified. The applied aspect of this scientific analysis is determined by the dynamics of lawmaking in this area and provides justification for the need to introduce appropriate legislative changes, and outlines the prospects for their application in practice. The practical importance of the study lies in the fact that strengthening criminal liability for certain criminal offences during martial law is a subject that goes far beyond purely theoretical importance.