Criminal offence and its nature

The aim of the paper is to substantiate the concept of the criminal offence meeting the demands of the society in regard to liberalization of criminal legislation and appropriate modern tendencies of development of protective branch of law. For the research a dialectical method was used as a universal tool of cognition in combination with such general scientific and private scientific methods as dogmatic (formally logical) and systematic. The research resulted in establishing significant features of a criminal offence. A criminal offence is defined as an act though formally comprising the features of any act (omission of an act) provided for by the criminal law not punished by imprisonment but recognized by the court as not having social threat due to its little significance. The formulated definition can be the basis for reconsideration of the issues connected with proving the nature of harmful acts not carrying social threat, distinguishing the crime from another offence, mechanism of establishing insignificance of an act.