Aggravating Сircumstances. Significance and Correlation with Qualifying Signs

The article explains the aggravating circumstances concept and essence. It shows the correlation between the aggravating circumstances and qualifying signs of crimes and examines the role of aggravating circumstances in sentencing under the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation. The qualifying signs and the aggravating circumstances are treated ambiguously in the doctrine of criminal law. The monographic study of these criminal law institutions in Russia have been carried out on the basis of the voided penal legislation. The analysis of the aggravating circumstance and qualifying signs of the crimes in this article has been done following the latest changes in the criminal legislation of the Russian Federation. During the study of these criminal responsibility differentiation means and punishment individualization 1,000 criminal cases has been studied. Also the mistakes made by the courts using qualifying signs and aggravating circumstances were revealed. The recommendations to improve judicial practice and criminal law were made in this paper based on an analysis of judicial practice. In addition, a comparative analysis of the criminal punishment institution under the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation and the Italian criminal law has been performed. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2015.v6n3s7p16