Division of offences carried out on human corpses due to their statutory object of protection

• Author: Michal Najman
• Position: Michal Najman - Faculty of Law and Administration, University of ?ód?, Poland, michalek5558@wp.eu.
• Pages: 607-617

Division of offences carried out on human corpses due

to their statutory object of protection

PhD. student Michał NAJMAN1

Abstract

The purpose of the article is to demonstrate the lack of uniformity in deter mining

the subject of pr otection of crimes performed on human co rpses or their resting place. The

conclusions were drawn from the ana lysis of 4 8 penal codes, including 15 European, 12

Asian, 9 African a nd 11 America n. It has been shown that the investigated offenses do not

constitute a homogeneous group due to the statutory object of protection. An attempt was

also made to a nswer the q uestion whether non-leg al factors, such as r eligion, social

development, economic development or the level of democratization in selected countries

have an impact on the definition of the object of protection of given crimes.

Keywords: desecr ation, deceased, corpse, cr iminal la w.

JEL Classification: K14, K19

1. Introduction

Offenses which object of caring out is human corpses or their resting place

are not perceived today as behaviors that threaten universal security2. They are also

committed relatively rarely on a global scale3. They often coincide with serious

crimes such as genocide, as well as are related to previously committed offenses,

e.g. hiding the corpse of a murder victim4. This is probably one of the reasons for

their lack of popularity. Aesthetic considerations appear to be another reason for

the low interest in these crimes. Yet another factor in overlooking particular crimes

in doctrinal discourse is the multi-faceted and complexity of their object of

protection. Nevertheless, to this day there are many profoundly interesting

dogmatic problems of how to qualify them. The basic problem is what determine

the object of protection of crimes. No consensus has been reached at present

regarding the answer to the question whether religious feelings are violated, or

perhaps solely the deceased, or perhaps public order, are violated when human

corpses are not buried. Moreover, it is worth noting that crimes carried out on

1 Michał Najman - Faculty of Law and Administration, University of Łód, Poland, michalek5558

@wp.eu.

2 http://www.sprawy-generalne.brpo.gov.pl/pdf/2010/06/649645/1629495.pdf (access on 30.06.2019).

3 https://blogs.findlaw.com/legally_weird/2017/02/what-are-the-penalties-for-desecrating-the-

dead.html; www.cambridge.org/core/ journals/legal-studies/article/grave-offence-corpse-

desecration-and-the-criminal-law/93A9757B7B1701D956D9609B2FC5C0F9 (access on

30.06.2019).

4 https://s3.amazonaws.com/files.peacecorps.gov/documents/open-

government/2016_Statistical_Report_of_Crimes_Against_Volunt eers.pdf (access on 30.06.2019);

https://www.unodc.org/documents/data-and-analysis/Crime-statistics/International_Statistics_on_

Crime_and_Justice.pdf (access on 30.06.2019).