The characteristic of the subject of criminal encroachments on cultural values

Abstract

The Criminal Code of Ukraine gives insufficiently attention to protection of cultural property of the Ukrainian people. It is shown as in absence of legislative fixing of specific object of crimes against cultural values as well as it is inconsistent with the level of punishment for the separate kinds of criminal offences. As a result, offences, the subject of which is the cultural values, “are sprayed” on different sections of the Criminal Code of Ukraine, not all forms of socially-dangerous behavior in relation to the cultural values are criminalized, punishments for some criminal offences of this category are obviously underestimated and are not ordered mutually. Instead of the uniform and accurate concept of Articles 193, 201, 298, 2981, 438 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine there are different formulations of the subject of criminal offences which are defined the concept “cultural values”. That is why for the legislator it makes sense to unify terminology which is used in the specified articles of the Criminal Code of Ukraine, having changed the concept of the subject of an offence to the term “cultural values” which is more universal. Such changes considerably would simplify work of the law enforcement bodies, at the same time have cleaned superfluous subjectivity while referring this or that subject to a category of “cultural values”, would resolve the mess connected with definition of a subject of the criminal encroachments. Despite considerable public danger and prevalence of encroachments on cultural values, in the statutory acts, in the legal literature there is no a uniform point of view at the concept of the subject of these offences. The article characterizes the subject of criminal encroachments on cultural values. The analysis of scientific and legal sources has allowed to draw a conclusion on urgency and necessity of the research of the legal and theoretical nature of the concept “cultural values” as well as adjacent categories “cultural heritage”, “an archaeological heritage”, “cultural property”; their content, structure and improvement of the legal regulation. Cultural values are defined as those which created by the person or subjected to actions, the unique subjects which have national or universal values and are valuable for science and culture, which are subject to preservation and protection.