Principle of equality before the criminal law implementation during the qualification of crime in Ukraine

In the article under consideration, the author proves facts in a number of scientific provisions that are important for the practice of criminal law. After analyzing the scientific works on this issue, it was proved, that the study of the principle of equality is relevant given the distorted understanding of the principle in Ukraine. The article proves the thesis about the role of the principle of equality before the criminal law during the crime qualification. They can be described by the following provisions: 1) compliance with the rules of criminal law qualification of the act and application them to persons regardless of their racial, national, social origin, religion, social or political views, professional status, etc .; 2) at the same time, law enforcement bodies during the criminal-legal qualification must take into account both the objective, legal differences of the persons, whose action is qualified, and the individual characteristics of the act itself. Such consideration of objective differences requires «differentia equality». Violations of the principle of equality before the criminal law will be errors or abuses of law enforcement agencies. Such errors or abuses are of two types: 1) different criminal-legal qualification of the act in the case of similar legal situations; 2) the same criminal-legal qualification of the act in the case of different legal situations; 3) ignoring the features that have legal significance for the qualification. These errors or abuses can be considered a violation of the principle of equality before the criminal law only if they discriminate against certain categories of subjects on certain grounds. Therefore, not any errors or abuses in qualifications can be considered a violation of the principle of equality before the criminal law, but only discriminatory. Such errors are unintentional. Instead, abuse is always intentional, often due to non-legal material factor