Extreme need as a condition excluding the criminality of the act

In the Criminal Code, a crime is defined as a volitional act of human behavior, expressed both in action and in inaction, the consequences of which are socially dangerous, violate the rights of other citizens, society and the state. For example, murder is certainly a crime. But there are circumstances justifying the behavior of a person, which led to the death of another person, and causing the absence of punishment for this act.

There are many such exceptions: the killing of an enemy in war on orders, the death of a robber who climbed into the house, the murder of a criminal during detention. That is, extreme necessity as a special circumstance in the behavior of a citizen is also considered as a condition excluding the criminality of the act.

In Article 39 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, extreme necessity is treated as circumstances related to the elimination of danger to the person or other persons arising from the actions of a third person, natural phenomena or technical processes, resulting in damage to strangers who are in no way involved in the situation.

Often in the minds of people there is a substitution of such concepts as necessary defense and extreme necessity. The key moment distinguishing these circumstances is the status of the injured person. In the first case, the victim threatened your life, health or property. For example, a thief climbed into the house, but as a result of your self-defense received a brain injury. Accordingly, if the victim has nothing to do with the threat that has arisen for you or others, then this is an extreme necessity. An example is the following: you walk along the sidewalk, you see a car rushing towards you. To save your life you jump aside, push the passerby, he falls and gets a brain injury.

Often the extreme necessity is the main reason in the actions of policemen, firefighters, doctors. Broken shop windows, crashes, and blown up rooms are an integral part of working days of the guards of order. Everything is conditioned by circumstances and is an absolute necessity. The main thing is that the damage caused by such actions could be correlated with the threat being liquidated. The same norm of the criminal code operates in medicine. To save the life of a person in an accident, the doctor decides to amputate the leg. The damage to the subject is, of course, great, but the doctor's actions are justified. You can also consider the example of providing medical care to an outsider or a close person. A pregnant woman fell in the street, bleeding started, a passerby hijacked someone else's car to take the woman in the hospital to the hospital. The threat can also come from the phenomena of nature. For example, during a tsunami, a person hijacked someone else's car to save his family's life.

At the same time, it is important to know that the Criminal Code establishes norms under which excesses of extreme necessity can be ascertained. You can not save one life by destroying the other, smash the neighbor's car to save your own. The harm caused as a result of the action of the subject of law should not exceed the threat actually existed for a person or society.