Criminal liability for incitement to suicide or attempted suicide: challenges of legislative regulation

Introduction: the article is devoted to the study of the challenge of criminal liability for causing suicide under the criminal legislation of Russia, to clarify the gaps in its enforcement, as well as to formulate proposals for making changes and additions to the relevant norms of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation in order to improve and effectively implement them. Materials and Methods: as the research materials, we used the norms of current domestic and foreign legislation that provide for liability for causing suicide and attempted suicide; domestic and foreign academic literature. The following methods of cognition were used: analysis, synthesis, statistical, legal, comparative-legal. Results: it was established that the Russian current legislation does not define the concept of "suicide" as a legal category; the term "самоубийство" (suicide) was mistakenly identified with the term "суицид" (suicide); the discrepancy between the name of the norm 110 of the Criminal Code and its content was revealed; the indication of the methods of committing a crime in the disposition of Part 1 of Article 110 of the Criminal Code significantly narrowed the possibility of qualifying a crime if it was committed using other methods not specified in the Article. Discussion and Conclusions: the article proves the exception to the provisions of Part 1 of Article 110 of the Criminal Code of instructions on methods of committing crimes; the sign "obviously" the minority of the victim as the aggravating feature of the composition of the Article 110 of the Criminal Code; the proposed new legal text of Article 110 of the Criminal Code and formulated the ways of legislative improvement of the relevant rules of the Criminal Code provides for liability for inducement to commit suicide or organization of activities aimed at committing these acts.