Nature and degree of public danger of crimes and uncertain activities: problems ofconcept and criteria of definition
The article is devoted to one of the fundamental concepts of criminal law - the social danger of an act.Based on the current state of its scientific development and consistently justifying the answers to the mostimportant debatable questions related to this concept, the author comes to the conclusion that the public dangerof a crime is part of a broader and universal concept of "danger to society" and is an objective-subjective, integrative property of criminal behavior of a person, subject to consideration at all stages of its criminal legalassessment and consisting of all legally significant signs of a crime. The integrative status of public danger isdetermined by the need to take it into account in the process of criminalization of a socially dangerous act,legal assessment of an already criminalized act, as well as non-criminal behavior provided for by criminallegislation. In addition, having an objective-subjective nature, public danger combines two parameters that areequally important for the analysis of science and practice: the area of due, rooted in the sphere of natural lawand the area of existence. The integrative properties of public danger are also manifested in the fact that itconsists of all legally significant signs of a crime, both within the composition and outside it. In other words,the concept of public danger unites all manifestations of criminal tort and its criminal-legal consequences. The article notes that, in contrast to the public danger of crimes, the public danger of non-criminal acts hasbeen studied much less: criminal law science has yet to find and justify answers to questions about what itconsists of, what is its essence, legal nature, etc.