CRIMINAL LIABILITY FOR DOMESTIC VIOLENCE: ANALYSIS OF THE PRACTICE OF BRINGING PERPETRATORS TO JUSTICE

Abstract

The article analyzes the data of the pre-trial investigation and court proceedings on bringing perpetrators to criminal liability under Article 126-1 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine. In particular, the author analyzed the data of pre-trial investigation bodies for 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023. We also analyzed court statistics for 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023. Among the analyzed indicators, the indicators for 2020 are particularly noteworthy, since it was then that proceedings under 126-1 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine first appeared in the reports of the Prosecutor General's Office as registered and in the court statistics as pending. In fact, in 2020, neither the pre-trial investigation bodies nor the courts had any pending proceedings from previous years. The analyzed data shows that most of the proceedings after registration of information in the URPTI do not result in bringing a person to justice, and that the speed of the trial is much slower compared to the pre-trial investigation. Based on the review of a large number of law enforcement practices, ECHR decisions on the interpretation of Articles 2 and 3 of the ECHR, as well as scientific works on prosecution for domestic violence, it can be concluded that there are currently many practical problems with regard to criminal proceedings under Article 126-1 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine. For example, the distinction between an administrative offense under Article 173-2 of the Code of Administrative Offenses and Article 126-1 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine; the systematic nature of domestic violence and the procedure for establishing it; the principle of non bis in idem in domestic violence proceedings, etc. These and other issues are planned to be analyzed in further research.