Child abduction as a type of abduction and independent criminal offence

Abduction of minors is a type of abduction which consist of unlawful abduction of a minor from parents or other physical or legal person entrusted with care of a minor. However, there is a big difference between the child abduction as a form of abduction, with characteristic varieties (parental child abduction, child abduction for sexual abuse, child abduction as an act of denationalisation) and child abduction in narrow sense which, according to the current Criminal Code, represents independent riminal offence. Therefore, a question of mutual relationship between child abduction as a type of abduction (which can be a consequence of various criminal offences) and child abduction as independent criminal offence imposes itself. The paper firs considers child abduction as a type of abduction, and then analyses legal description of child abduction as independent offence. The paper also considers controversial issues relating to this matter, especially the issue of discrimination of child abduction from general criminal offence of abduction, as well as the dilemma concerning means and ways of their conduction. An overview of frequency and spreadness of child abduction at the territory of the Republic of Serbia, for the period 2005-2007, will be presented at the end of the paper.