Problems of criminal legal assessment of incitement to suicide when the act is insignificant

Introduction: human life is the highest value in any civilized society, so the legal mechanism for its protection is constantly in need of improvement. In the integral system of this mechanism a significant place is occupied by criminal legislation, which includes norms that ensure the safety of human life from criminal encroachments by third parties. An important role in the fight against such encroachments is assigned to Art. 1101 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, which provides for liability for incitement to suicide. Given the short time that has passed since the criminalization of this norm, as well as the lack of clarifications from the highest judicial body in Russia, in investigative and judicial practice, controversial issues often arise when qualifying acts that inspire suicidal behavior. The article attempts to give a criminal-legal assessment of individual facts of incitement to suicide and facilitating its commission through the prism of such an institution of the General Part of the Criminal Law as the insignificance of an act. Materials and methods: the solution of research problems was achieved through a comprehensive analysis of the current criminal legislation of the Russian Federation, the rulings of the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation, the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation, the decisions of the Plenum of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation, as well as the theoretical developments of specialists in the field of criminal law. The methodology of the work includes the use of both general scientific methods (analysis, synthesis, deduction, induction) and private scientific methods, including formal-logical and structural ones. The results of the study: made it possible to reveal certain signs of a crime under Part 1 of Art. 1101 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, and show the ambiguity of their interpretation in the qualification process. Findings and Conclusions: the author comes to the conclusion that the social danger of individual facts of incitement and facilitating to suicide may often not correspond to the criminal level that the legislator lays down in the relevant acts, recognizing them as criminal. Separate provisions of the norm on criminal involvement in suicide allow for wide limits of interpretation of the provisions of the criminal law on the insignificance of the act in the process of qualifying the deed as a crime.