Ontological Aspects of Understanding Public Danger as an Element of a Crime

The paper examines the issue of understanding and meaning of public danger within the definition of the concept of «a crime». The author focuses on ontological foundations of social danger and draws the conclusion about the futility of this concept in the perspective of the general doctrine of a crime. The author substantiates the idea that social danger is derived from the harm caused. It is harm that forms the general concept of a crime, defines its contours and characteristic features. Public danger does not represent an objective element of a criminal act, it is rather conditional and is characterized in many ways by arbitrary considerations of the legislator, which are beyond the scope of criminal law. Assessment of a particular human behavior cannot be universal, and, therefore, the category of public danger is always required today only in order to justify the need to introduce a particular prohibition under criminal law. The paper states that public danger cannot characterize a crime, because crime is always associated with harm, and public danger is a derivative of the harm caused (or harm that could have been caused to social values). It is harm that characterizes an action as either dangerous or non-dangerous. Therefore, the main emphasis in understanding the crime should be shifted to the category of harm, its significance and materiality in order to define the concept of what constitutes a crime. In this perspective, public danger is a necessary element of harm and its understanding can only make sense through a general understanding of harm as a consequence of a crime. Therefore, a crime is an act that harms protected values, committed by an individual culpably and the elements of which are indicated in the criminal law.