SUBJECTIVE ELEMENTS OF JUVENILE CRIMINAL OFFENCES

Abstract

The subjective features of the juveniles criminal offences are characterized in the article, both the features of the subject and the mental element are defined, the correlation of the criminal offence motives and the offender’s personality are determined. Today, an important issue is still the administration of juvenile justice. Researchers and experts substantiate the need for special treatment of cases that involve juveniles, because they cannot be unambiguous in outlining the reasonability, purpose, task and structure of the system of special treatment for the issue of improving the legal standards of juvenile criminal liability. To determine the criminal liability, important are the subjective features of any juvenile delinquency, which characterize the subject and the mental elements of a criminal offence. An important aspect of this issue is to outline the need for approaching the appropriate age of criminal liability, because only a person responsible for his / her actions (a criminally sane person) can be the subject of a criminal offence. Criminal sanity should be determined with due consideration of the following two criteria: legal (this criminal offence being committed by a mentally healthy person able to be conscious of his/her actions (and their consequences) in full and to control them during the crime) and psychological (state of the person’s consciousness, his/her ability to commit conscious actions). An important element in the body of any criminal offence is a mental element. Determination of an object, a physical element, a subject provides for the conditions required to determine the mental elements of a criminal offence that are an internal manifestation of a socially dangerous act, which gives the understanding of the mental processes that occur in the consciousness of the guilty person while he/she is committing an offence. An integral condition of legitimacy and reasonability of applying criminal remedies to a juvenile who committed a criminal offence is to determine the specific features of mental elements. Mental elements involve two groups of legal features: mandatory and optional. Mandatory features include the guilt; optional features include a motive, a purpose and the emotional state. In studying the mental elements of involvement of juveniles, a motive and a purpose are important to determine the adult’s act. A motive of a criminal offence is the encouragement to commit such an offence. A purpose is the mentally anticipated result desired by the subject. A motive and a purpose correlate – and not only correlate, but also define each other and sometimes coincide in their essence. In other words, the criminal offence motives are closely related with the person as a single and complex internal system of the state, qualities and processes. That is why, to study the correlation of the criminal offence motives and the offender’s personality is one of the important tasks in the social and psychological research and criminological studies.