Sexual harassment: criminological grounds and criminal law powers

Abstract

The objective reality of social interaction demonstrates the further development of social relations in various aspects of human existence, which gives rise to new contradictions that require resolution, including legal regulation by the norms of various law branches. There is a need to establish the limits for the subject’s legally acceptable behaviour, upon reaching which the area of deviations begins. Sexual harassment is one of such problems emerged at the end of the 20th century. Many foreign countries faced with this social phenomenon have recognized the criminality of sexual harassment in continuation of the chosen political trend towards liberalization of sexual relations. Similar trends are also observed in Russian society. They are practiced both at the level of discussions within the doctrinal environment and at the legislative level. Concerned about the seriousness of the problem and armed with the results of sociological research, Russian forensic scientists are engaged in developing a concept for the criminalization of harassment. The purpose of this work is to study the criminological grounds for recognizing the wrongfulness of sexual harassment and to consider the current criminal law powers against harassment in order to confirm the need to criminalize this phenomenon or to deny it. To achieve this purpose, the opinions of domestic and foreign researchers were studied, a rather-legal analysis of the domestic policy tendencies in Russia and foreign states regarding the liberalization of sexual relations was carried out. The conditions of the modern Russian legislation in combating sexual harassment were studied. Applied are such general scientific research methods as analysis, synthesis, generalization, as well as such specific scientific methods as statistical method, content analysis, formal logical method, and rather-legal method. As a result, the authors come to the conclusion that there is a recognized unlawfulness of sexual harassment in the norms of the current Russian legislation and that it is inexpedient to criminalize this phenomenon as an independent crime in view of the sufficiency of powers available within the framework of the modern criminal law.