Dmitriy S. Volkovoy

This article is devoted to the problem of the volitional content of intent in crimes with formal compositions. The author analyzes the configuration of types of intent in crimes with formal compositions from the point of view of the current criminal law and the theory of criminal law. It is concluded that a crime with a formal composition with indirect intent is impossible, since the volitional criterion of indirect intent (“conscious assumption”) It is characterized by substantial uncertainty, while the volitional criterion of direct intent (“desire”) is the only definition that exhaustively expresses the volitional content of intent. In the article, by analyzing the doctrine of criminal law of the XIX–XX centuries. The problem of a person’s desire to commit an action (inaction) regardless of the onset of socially dangerous consequences is considered as a volitional criterion of intent in a crime with a formal composition: the author concludes that intent in crimes with a formal composition can only be described using an intellectual criterion, since the desire to commit an action (inaction) regardless of the onset of socially dangerous consequences is an element of the sanity of the subject of the crime, but not of guilt. The author comes to the conclusion that bringing to criminal responsibility for the commission of crimes with formal compositions is an objective imputation, while in order to avoid objective imputation, it is possible to construct many compositions of crime traditionally attributed to formal ones as compositions of danger.