APPLICATION OF PENALTIES FOR CRIMINAL OFF ENSES COMM ITTED BY EXPERTS

Abstract

The article deals with the issue of punishment for criminal offenses committed by experts. It has been established that cases of prosecution for violations committed in the course of expert activity are rare. Such a state of affairs may indicate the following: 1) absence of violations during expert activity; 2) not all criminal offenses committed by experts are included in the statistical reporting, but only a part of them, the rest are unregistered and thus constitute latent crime. Regarding the small number of verdicts in cases of the commission of a criminal offense provided for in Art. 384 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine can also be explained by the fact that the facts of experts providing two different conclusions that contradict each other remain outside the attention of law enforcement agencies. In this case, measures are not taken to clarify the circumstances of the provision of two different conclusions and, if there are grounds, to bring the expert to criminal liability. When assessing the identity of the culprit, the courts point to a very wide range of data that characterizes it. Among the mitigating circumstances, the court usually considers the following: sincere remorse and active assistance in the detection of a criminal offense. As for the circumstances that aggravate the punishment, in the judgments of the courts on the commission of a criminal offense, provided for in Art. 384 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine does not provide for them. Criminal law norms that regulate responsibility for violations committed in the course of expert activity are applied extremely rarely and do not allow to ensure effective protection of relations that protect the interests of justice, in terms of ensuring the procedural order of obtaining evidence in criminal proceedings. This state of affairs may indicate that not all criminal offenses committed by experts are included in the statistical reporting, but only a part of them, the rest are unregistered and thus constitute latent crime.