Maradina Y. Torture: Social Determinants and Elements of Crime.

The paper is dedicated to the investigation into social determinants of criminal liability for torture and the elements of this crime. A wide legal and regulatory framework at the international and national levels, legislation on the criminal liability of Ukraine and some foreign countries, pre-Soviet and Soviet legislation has been used for the paper; an overview of scientific publications devoted to the issues studied has been made; the contemporary theoretical developments of leading specialists in law, medicine, philology have been critically comprehended; the materials on the prohibition of torture issued by supranational organizations and human rights organizations have been studied; the statistical data of the central authorities regarding the spread of torture has been analyzed; the practices of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) on the application of Article 3 of the 1950 Convention as well as the practices of national courts in cases concerning an offense under Article 127 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine have been generalized. A retrospective analysis of the legal regulation of torture prohibition was conducted, a positive lawmaking experience of the certain foreign countries within introduction of criminal liability for torture was revealed, a system and factor essense of social conditionality of criminal liability for torture were defined, a criminal-law characteristic of the elements of torture was given, a system interconnections of the legal provision as to criminal liability for torture with other criminal legal provisions were established, recommendations for qualification of torture were developed, improvements of the legal provision, prescribed by Art. 127 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine were suggested. It is noted that the negative social essence of torture consists in bringing a victim through ill-treatment for a specific purpose or in connection with a certain motive in a particular psychophysiological state due to which the person’s autonomous self-regulation program “breaks”. The said is introduced as a “natural prescript”, according to which the system functions in a self-organizing mode, dynamically and reasonably adjusting to the external environment changes.