Encouraging a Crime in Criminal Law: Historical Analysis and Foreign Experience

The paper examines the institution of encouraging a crime in a criminal legal aspect. The absence in criminal law of a comprehensive unified understanding of the encouraging a crime, reflecting its key characteristics and features, causes difficulties in law enforcement practice. The author notes that in order to form a unified understanding of this legal phenomenon, a retrospective analysis of the institution of encouraging a crime in Russian criminal law, a study of the foreign legislation of some European countries, the United States of America, as well as the states of the post-Soviet space on the issue of criminalization of encouraging activities is necessary. The paper provides an analysis of the international practice of the European Court of Human Rights on the  issue of understanding encouraging to commit a crime and its permissible limits. A study of the decisions of an international judicial body showed that the concept of encouraging a crime the way a court understands it is based on procedural and substantive criteria that reflect the specifics of encouraging a crime. However, the legal position of the European Court of Human Rights, which equates encouraging a crime with “incitement”, which is the basis for the normative regulation of investigative activities, paved the way for correlating encouraging a crime with the institution of complicity in criminal law. Thus, a historical analysis of the institution of encouraging a crime, a study of foreign regulatory legal acts establishing criminal liability for encouraging a crime, as well as a study of the practice of the European Court of Human Rights will allow a detailed and comprehensive consideration of the investigated legal phenomenon for the development and formation of a single criminal law concept of encouraging crimes. Based on the research results, the author proposes a definition of encouraging a crime.

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