Previous Conviction as a Sign of the Corpus Delicti of Certain Crimes

Relevance. This article discusses topical issues of expanding the role of a criminal record in modern criminal law, acquiring the status of a sign of certain elements of crimes, as well as the problems that arise in this case and require resolution at the legislative level.
The purpose is to identify the law value of a previous conviction as a sign of the subject of certain crimes, considering the modern version of the criminal law and practice of the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation.
The objectives analysis of the composition of crimes, including a previous conviction as a mandatory feature of the subject, determining the patterns of fixing a criminal record as a mandatory feature of the composition, identifying existing problems and determining directions for improving criminal legislation in terms of fixing a previous conviction as a mandatory feature of the subject of certain types of crimes.
Methodology. The methodological base of the study is made up of general scientific and particular scientific methods of cognition of reality, which made it possible to investigate a previous conviction as a sign of the elements of certain crimes.
Results. The experience of fixing the value of a previous conviction in criminal law for bringing to criminal responsibility and sentencing from the moment the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation came into force in 1996 to the present has been studied. The main approaches to accounting for a previous conviction in the process of qualification and sentencing are identified. Violations of the systematic approach were found in the formulation of criminal law norms that consider a previous conviction as a sign of composition. A shortcoming of the current version of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation has been established, which allows in some cases to consider a previous conviction twice, both in qualifying and in sentencing. Ways to overcome the identified problems and contradictions are proposed.
Conclusion. A previous conviction is considered not only in the case of recidivism of crimes and the imposition of punishment, but also as a sign of the main and qualified elements of crimes. Accounting for a previous conviction as a sign of a corpus delicti should be carried out systematically, with unified wording. The issue of the ratio of the social danger of a crime committed by a person brought to administrative responsibility and convicted has not been resolved. In cases where a previous conviction is a sign of the main or qualified corpus delicti, it should be provided in Article 68 a special rule that prevents double counting of this feature, as was done in the original version of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation in 1996.

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