Sanctions are strict, but they don’t work

President Dmitry Medvedev called on the prosecutor's office, investigation and court authorities, when classifying crimes related to incitement of national and religious hatred, to take into account the possibility of particularly grave consequences of such actions, Interfax-Religion reports.

“We can look at the issues of strengthening responsibility for actions related to inciting interethnic and interfaith hatred,” D. Medvedev said at a meeting of the State Council Presidium dedicated to issues of interethnic relations.

At the same time, he admitted that “in our country, very strict sanctions often do not work simply because this is the criminal policy.”

Therefore, according to the president, “first of all, this is a question of how prosecutors, investigators and judges understand the relevant sanctions.”

“If crimes of this kind are considered serious, then the punishment for them is serious, if it is considered as a trifle - just think, he wrote something on the Internet, don’t care about it, he didn’t kill anyone - then the punishment for this is conditional,” - Medvedev explained.