Socio-Psychological Patterns in the Criminal Law

Abstract

Contemporary criminal law has a well-developed socio-psychological mechanism of formation and action, which is subject to a set of general and special laws. They characterize, on the one hand, the reflection in the mind of the legislator of criminalization and other factors, and on the other hand, the reflection in the sphere of the psyche of people of criminal legal means, first of all, prohibitions and punishments for their violations, as well as the reverse process of the impact of the results of this reflection on people’s behavior. The depth of penetration of criminal law into the psychological sphere of the individual and the possibility of using the most valuable mental qualities of a person for criminal law purposes, and, consequently, ultimately, the effectiveness of the functioning of criminal law, depends on the knowledge, consideration and use of these socio-psychological patterns in law-making and law enforcement activities. The importance of cognition and use of socio-psychological patterns in criminal law is also explained by its historically conditioned emphasis on the processes taking place in the human psyche (from fear of crime as a factor of criminalization to fear of punishment as a deterrent motive and moral correction as the goal of punishment). The work is based on the well-established provisions in psychology about the laws governing the consciousness and activity of people. The methodological basis for the study of socio-psychological patterns in criminal law were the principles of the dialectical method of cognition (objectivity and comprehensiveness of the consideration of the object, historicism, universal connection of phenomena, system), as well as general scientific (analysis, synthesis, induction, deduction, description, classification) and private (system structural, formal logical, sociological) research methods. The research made it possible to define socio-psychological patterns in criminal law, to show the mechanism of their action and use, as well as to create tools for measuring their practical implementation. For this purpose, the paper identifies two groups of laws that characterize the socio-psychological mechanism of the formation and functioning of criminal law: general (as a manifestation of universal patterns of human mental activity in the content of criminal law) and special (these are special interrelations of social psychology and legal consciousness with criminal law-making and law enforcement).