Sense of Justice as a Determining Component of the Criminal Responsibility

Abstract

The analysis of the essence and functions of the sense of justice during the implementation of criminal liability is carried out. It is noted that the sense of justice is an object of cognition, through which the reflection of the rightful phenomena in the mind of a person, evaluation in legal terms and categories of existing social relations. This means that the sense of justice is the link between the normative basis of the law of Ukraine on criminal responsibility and the practical implementation of criminal liability. Accordingly, the work of the legal consciousness performs an appraisal function that consists in perception, comprehension of the normative content of the legal act, as a result of which the relation of the subject of legal relations with the acting and the desired law and legal reality is formed. It is determined that the level of awareness of legal norms influences the establishment of personal interests of the individual in the system of social and legal Relations, which are the motive for the choice of lawful or misconduct in the future. Proceeding from this, the regulative function of legal awareness in the mechanism of realization of criminal responsibility is obvious, which consists in the formation of the behavioral element of participants in criminal legal relations. It is indicated that the denial of the importance of the norms of law at the level of the individual legal consciousness of the person to whom the criminal offense was inflicted is a factor contributing to the search for possible options for restoring social justice by ignoring the legal order. The consequence of a negative attitude towards the right of a person who suffered from an unlawful act may be concealment of a crime, unwillingness to appeal to the law enforcement agency of state power or distortion of the truth in the course establishing the fact of committing a criminal offense. It is determined that the concealment of crimes constitutes the cause of the emergence of latent crime, the public danger of which lies in the absence of the realization of criminal responsibility, and as a consequence the person who committed the crime avoids punishment, and the material and moral damage inflicted by unlawful actions is not reimbursed. It is proved that the implementation of criminal responsibility at all stages of the criminal process is closely related to the professional legal consciousness of officials of authorized state bodies and individual legal awareness of participants in criminal legal relations. The interrelation between the level of legal consciousness and the effectiveness of the mechanism for the implementation of criminal of responsibility is investigated.