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The Duma refused a broad amnesty: instead of 300 thousand people, several dozen will be released

Last Wednesday, the fourth and, apparently, the final draft resolution on the amnesty of prisoners in connection with the 65th anniversary of Victory in the Great Patriotic War was submitted to the State Duma. Its author is the chairman of the Committee on civil, ...

Last Wednesday, the fourth and, apparently, the final draft resolution on the amnesty of prisoners in connection with the 65th anniversary of Victory in the Great Patriotic War was submitted to the State Duma. Its author is Pavel Krasheninnikov, Chairman of the Committee on Civil, Criminal, Arbitration and Procedural Law of United Russia. According to the project, only about a hundred prisoners are subject to amnesty. These are only veterans of the war and rear, prisoners of concentration camps and Leningrad blockade. Thus, the draft resolution submitted on Monday by Krasheninnikov's fellow party members was annulled. 47 United Russia members offered to release from various types of criminal punishment (fine, probation, correctional labor, etc.) more than 300 thousand people, including 46 thousand had to leave prison.

Among the released, according to the Duma members, could be participants in the hostilities in the post-war period, pensioners, pregnant women, as well as minors who committed minor crimes for the first time. They could have, but they didn't… It took the deputies only two days to radically revise their consolidated view of the amnesty. As Novaya Gazeta was told in the apparatus of United Russia deputy Andrei Nazarov (he participated in the preparation of the first version of the draft), on Wednesday all 47 deputies were asked to abandon the original version of the amnesty and support a completely different interpretation of it.

The Duma opposition believes that the reason for such a radical change is the inconsistency between the actions of United Russia and the Kremlin, which opposed a broad amnesty. “The trouble with United Russia is that their Central Committee is not in the Duma at all. Therefore, the decisions they make within the walls of parliament may not coincide with the point of view of their Central Committee, ”explained Gennady GUDKOV, State Duma deputy from A Just Russia. The deputy from the Communist Party of the Russian Federation Vadim SOLOVIEV agrees with him. According to him, the initial decision of United Russia is a broad gesture dictated by the desire to stop the fall of confidence in the ruling party, and the decision of the presidential administration is explained by the crisis socio-economic situation in the country. According to the Kremlin's logic, Soloviev suggests, 46,000 people in conditions of growing unemployment will find themselves without any guarantees of employment, will be thrown into the streets and may again join the ranks of criminals. “However, we monitored recidivism among the amnestied — the percentage was very small, but then there was a normal socio-economic situation in the country,” Solovyov says.

As we have learned, the first United Russia project was initiated without the consent of the presidential administration. Our experts believe that in any case, United Russia turned out to be the winner. “In case of refusal of support, it will be possible to play on public opinion - they say, United Russia is so democratic. Serious conversations in society will begin now. And this is excellent material for the PR people of United Russia, ”Solovyov believes. His point of view is indirectly confirmed by the fact that among the nearly fifty signatories there are no top managers of the party in power: neither the leader of the faction Boris Gryzlov, nor his deputies, Vyacheslav Volodin and Andrei Vorobyov, nor the first deputy secretary of the presidium of the United Russia General Council Andrei Isaev. “If they knew for sure that the project would pass in the first version, then both Gryzlov and his deputies would not have bypassed this resonant proposal. And so the arrows were transferred to ordinary party members, ”explains our source in the State Duma.

Meanwhile, Alexander Urmanov, Krasheninnikov's press secretary, said that all prepared draft resolutions on amnesty would be considered on April 14: together with the United Russia committee, the previously submitted drafts from the Liberal Democratic Party and A Just Russia would be discussed. At this plenary session, the opposition will try to defend its proposals, which deal with thousands of amnestied. “When 100 people are released, there is no need to talk about any amnesty,” Gudkov said.

However, it is already clear which option will become law.

At the same time, according to the director of the Public Verdict Foundation, Natalia TAUBINA, in general, the justice system has not ceased to work in a repressive regime and is aimed at severe punishment for sometimes minor crimes. “It is not uncommon for people to receive sentences of up to two or three years for three stolen chickens. An amnesty could be the measure that would allow people who are serving real sentences for petty crimes to be removed from the system. A similar situation is with the presidential pardon commission. If even ten years ago this commission really met and considered petitions for pardon, and in cases where there were grounds, these petitions were granted, then in recent years the number of granted pardons has sharply decreased,” says Taubina. And the Ombudsman for Children in Moscow, Yevgeny BUNIMOVICH, believes that it is an amnesty with social support that could combine the inevitability of punishment and the chance that society gives young people: “Just letting them out is very dangerous. If we could help the guys who have already been punished to get out of this, it could have an effect. In this environment, adults are listened to much less than each other. Our endless interdepartmental disunity is very difficult. By the time the papers have been sent, by the time the Ministry of Internal Affairs bodies have handed over the information to the guardianship authorities, to the social services, the person is already gone.”

List of 47 State Duma deputies who changed their point of view within two days:

V.M. Aseev, I.V. Barinov, V.V. Bobyrev, N.V. Burykina, A.N. Volkov, D.F. Vyatkin, I.N. Gabdrakhmanov, N.F. Gerasimenko, V.A. Golovnev, N.N. Gonchar, V.S. Gruzdev, A.A. Gubkin, V.P. Denisov, V.G. Draganov, S.N. Egorov, S.V. Zheleznyak, A.G. Zavgaev, K.B. Zaitsev, V.V. Zubarev, V.A. Kazakov, I.I. Kvitka, A.B. Kogan, A.A. Kozlovsky, V.V. Kopylov, K.I. Kosachev, G.V. Kulik, O.V. Lebedev, N.S. Maksimova, V.E. Mathanov, V.R. Medinsky, A.A. Morozov, M.A. Mukabenova, A.G. Nazarov, O.V. Noskova, S.Yu. Osadchii, V.V. Prozorovsky, V.M. Reznik, A.M. Rozuvan, V.V. Ryazansky, A.V. Sabadash, E.Yu. Semenova, G.I. Sergeeva, L. Ya. Simanovsky, I. Yu. Fakhritdinov, V.S. Chernyavskyi, A.M. Chuhraev, V.B. Shuba