Differentiation of criminal responsibility: correlation with related concepts

Introduction: a range of debating points of criminal law related to the differentiation of criminal responsibility and related concepts are analyzed. The goals and objectives of the study are to identify the nature and more precise definition of the criteria of differentiating criminal responsibility, as well as to demarcate this category from such concepts as individualization and unification of responsibility. Methods used by the author are traditional for the legal science. Results: the features inherent in the differentiation of criminal responsibility are characterized. Special attention is paid to such a criterion as the nature of the social danger of the act, as well as to the parameters of its definition. The position of the Supreme Judicial Authority of Russia on the issues of determining the nature and degree of public danger of the offense the guilty person has committed is analyzed. The features demarcating the differentiation of criminal responsibility from its individualization are educed; the relationship between the differentiation and unification of criminal responsibility is characterized. The inaccuracy of the opposition of differentiating the responsibility to its integration is proved. Scope of application: the article may be useful for the theory of criminal law, the legislator, the interpretative activities of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation and the practitioners. Conclusions: the author concludes about the necessity to classify the nature of social danger defined by the legislator with the help of all the characteristics of the basic elements of a crime as the most important criteria of the differentiation of criminal responsibility; about the expediency of specifying the recommendation given for this reason by the Plenum of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation; about the fundamental differences between the differentiation of criminal responsibility and its individualization in a number of subjects, reasons, results and the order of related activities; about the dialectical contradiction between the process of the differentiation of criminal responsibility from its unification.