Failure to provide assistance to the sick: criminal legal characteristics and qualification issues
As the study of law enforcement practice shows, the correct legal assessment of the failure to provide assistance to the sick continues to retain its relevance. This is due to the presence of evaluative and blanket signs of the corresponding corpus delicti, the lack of an143Уголовное право и криминология; уголовно-исполнительное правоofficial and uniform doctrinal interpretation of its individual characteristics, the need to correlate theoretical provisions with the practice of using Article 124 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation. So, in particular, when characterizing the corpus delicti stipulated by the specified norm, there arises the problem of determining the subject - the person who is obliged to render assistance in accordance with the law or with a special rule. In addition, there are difficulties with the differentiation of the crime in question from related ones.The article analyzes the features of objective and subjective signs of failure to help the sick. On the basis of court decisions on particular criminal cases the problematic issues of qualifying the specified crime, related to its separation from causing death or serious injury to health through negligence due to the improper discharge by a person of his professional duties (Part 2 of Article109 and Part 2 of Article 118 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation) and the negligence which entailed causing heavy harm to health or the death of the person (Part 2 of Article 293 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation) are considered, some suggestions to improve the practice of applying the relevant norms of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation are formulated.