Criminal misdemeanor: novels of the Russian criminal legislation and questions of its improvement

The article is devoted to the problem of legally securing in the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation the concept of a criminal misdemeanor. On the basis of doctrinal provisions, Russian and foreign criminal legislation, the concept of a criminal misdemeanor is investigated, its relation to an insignificant act is analyzed, and the category of administrative prejudice is analyzed. The Author justifies the position according to which criminal misdemeanor cannot be a kind of crime of little gravity. It is concluded that a group of crimes with administrative prejudice, regardless of their category, should be classified as a criminal misdemeanor. With regard to this type of socially dangerous acts, the criminal law proposes to use the term “criminal misdemeanor”. An approach is presented to the establishment in the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation of a preferential criminal law regime for criminal misdemeanor: the unpunishable assassination and complicity in such a crime, the absence of aggregate and relapse, if one of the crimes is small, the reduction of the statute of limitations, the recognition of the person who committed such an act is unacceptable.