Bilovol O. Criminal liability for domestic violence (Article 126-1 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine).

In order Ukraine implements the Council of Europe Convention on Domestic Violence, Preventing and Combating Violence against Women (the Istanbul Convention), significant changes were made to the national legislation, which brought the organizational and legal framework for preventing and combating domestic violence and violence against women to the qualitatively new system level. Besides, the changes were made to the rules on criminal liability for the crimes against life and health of a person, for the crimes against the will, honor and dignity of a person, as well as for the crimes against sexual freedom and sexual integrity of a person. As a result of those changes, the Criminal Code of Ukraine was amended with the Article 126-1 «Domestic Violence». Despite the short time of its existence, that criminal law norm has been used quite actively in the law enforcement practice. At the same time, the analysis of the relevant scientific publications, as well as the law enforcement practice revealed a number of serious problems related to the application of the Article 126-1 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine. The author identifies the following main problems of the research: conditionality of criminalization in establishing criminal liability for domestic violence, characteristics of the objective and subjective features of the crime under the Article 126-1 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine, the relationship of the domestic violence with the related criminal and administrative offenses, as well as imposing punishment for committing that crime, etc.