Programs - Round Table

Lev Roitman:

On October 20, Russian Minister of Internal Affairs Sergey Stepashin said that over the 9 months of this year, crime levels increased sharply, including serious crimes: murders, large theft, including theft of ammunition, weapons, terrorist acts. The forecast of the Minister is completely alarmed for the future: the economic crisis will entail even more crime, many will try to return the lost savings with criminal actions. Meanwhile, sociologists testify: almost half of adult Russians experience stress, irritation, another 20% - fear. Crisis and crime - our conversation is about this today. Participated, all by phone: professor-legal professor Alexander Mikhlin; lawyer, publicist, writer Arkady Vaxberg; and the head of the Guild of Judicial Reporters of Russia Leonid Nikitinsky.

Crisis and crime in Russia - is there any link? Participants in the conversation are presented, but I will add: Alexander Mikhlin is the main researcher at the All -Russian Research Institute of the Ministry of Internal Affairs.

Alexander Mikhlin:

If we talk about the crime that exists now, in comparison with what was, say, in Soviet times, then, of course, the changes are very large. A number of new crimes appeared that our practice did not know before, did not know criminal law. This is due to the fact that the system of economy has changed, and, therefore, new crimes have appeared. The crisis, he, of course, thinks, will change the face of crime to a large extent. Well, apparently, such crimes as bankruptcy and related to them will increase, firstly, because there will be more bankruptcies, and, secondly, the people who sit in banks are not so honest that they will be guided by existing rules. Some people want to declare themselves bankrupt when he is not such to reduce payment to debtors; Someone will pretend that he is bankrupt, although bankruptcy is not yet and it will not be known whether it will be; It may be vice versa - those that are on the eve of bankruptcy will pretend that they are in order, so that this bankruptcy hit first of all not on them, but on their creditors. I must say that, apparently, actions such as racketeering or extortion will increase. Moreover, there will be cases, they will undoubtedly increase when people try to exercise their rights in an unlawful way, say, to break out debts when they cannot receive these debts normally, by going to court, and so on. This, of course, cannot be excluded, and it will probably be. Apparently, the number of abductions with the same goals will increase, that is, to demand for the stolen ransom in the amount that this or that person should pay or another legal entity.

Lev Roitman:

Thank you, Professor Mikhlin. Nevertheless, the crime you are talking about, mainly this is not the crime that covers an ordinary Russian. Leonid Nikitinsky, I will imagine you again, for those who are late by the beginning of our program: you are a leader, and probably, the foreman of the Russian judicial reporters guild is right. So, in your professional, reporting activity, whether the growth of crime is felt that the Minister of the Interior is static about, and the promise of the growth that he made in connection with the crisis, and the crisis - he is everywhere today, he is there. Do you feel it in the courts?

Leonid Nikitinsky:

So far, it is too early to make some finished judgments, in general, sociology requires some temporary hole in order to appear obvious trends, but I can hardly agree with you that this crime will pass by an ordinary person. Because with regard to deposits in banks, the financial crisis affected the interests directly, maybe not millions, but in any case, hundreds of thousands of ordinary citizens who have frozen deposits in banks. And such a type of fraud has already appeared, how to pull out these deposits from banks, all kinds of deceptions, and so on. In addition, I myself do not have this information, but we had just a few days ago just a congress of the guild of judicial reporters, and the first deputy Minister of the Interior Vladimir Vasiliev came to us. He made a very pleasant impression on us, such a general not similar to the cop. He said that there is already a jump in crime, and this applies to extortion, supposedly, it has grown one and a half times over the past month, and the number of abductions of citizens has doubled in Moscow. Of course, in such a short time, this statistics are quite arbitrary, but in general one can actually expect this. And one can expect, of course, an increase in the number of ordinary crimes, such as apartment thefts that are associated with unemployment, since the crisis has very much aggravated this problem - unemployment. Another thing is that you need to figure out who specifically ended up on the street, what categories and so on. But, I think, simply based on theoretical concepts, the criminogenic meaning of this crisis will, alas, is quite large.

Lev Roitman:

Thank you, Leonid Nikitinsky. Thus, if I understood you correctly, you also talked about the so -called white -haired crime: fraud, extortion, which increased in connection with the financial side of this crisis, and the crime of ordinary, traditional, criminal, criminal. Arkady Iosifovich Vaxberg, all that we talked about, occurs in the context of the restructuring of law enforcement agencies. What will this restructuring, moving the structures of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, a number of them, in particular, correctional structures, into the structures of the Ministry of Justice?

Arkady Vaxberg:

The reorganization, the reforms that you are talking about, are presented to me, in principle, very reasonable and long -naughty, it was written about this a lot earlier, much more, by the way, what is written even now. But here one question arises: in connection with the catastrophic state of crime, I want to understand how these reforms have influenced, influence and can really affect the fight against crime, at least to prevent relapse and much more, which excites society. After all, all reforms and reorganization are not an end in itself, it is only a means of achieving any specific goals, the tool is not a goal. And if their result is, well,, say, the reduction of the apparatus, a decrease in the expenses of the corresponding line of the budget and so on, then this is perhaps quite good intentions, but only side, not the main ones. I want to understand what is being done in order to try to solve the main problem? We do not know this. While we are still, this can be seen even in this part of our discussion, in the phase, rather, a statement of fact, a sad statement of sad facts, but not in finding specific ways to overcome this. On what path is the solution of the main problem lies? At one time, there were quite a lot of and intelligently about this, discussions in which smart, competent people took part, were the property of publicity, and even if something was not resolved, but much did not dare, the society, at least, saw what these competent people and specialists were concerned about. And this positively influenced the formation of public opinion. Now it seems that the power structures are generally not up to it, there are more important things to do or - a feeling of hopelessness, when hands are dropped, and this always fetters the initiative. One way or another, the rampant crime, which has long been given the exact name of the “lawlessness”, it has already become along with all the well -known consequences of this economic disaster that we spoke about the main disaster for the huge part of the country's population, here I completely agree with Leonid Nikitinsky. This affects the interests of not a narrow circle of people, this affects the interests of a huge part of the population, which does not find an answer: which, in fact, is being done, and whether it can be done at all, maybe this is not realistic at all, maybe our destiny today only state this sad reality and wait for events to develop.

Lev Roitman:

Thank you, Arkady Iosifovich. Alexander Mikhlin, what Arkady Iosifovich spoke about, this restructuring in the system of the Ministry of Justice and the Ministry of the Interior, which was just during the crisis, I will remind the date - September 1, investigation isolators, the so -called correctional institutions, prisons - everything was transferred from the structure of the Ministry of Internal Affairs under the “hat” of the Ministry of Justice and this is, of course, a tremendous restructuring, because a tremendous perestroik Also industrial enterprises of the Ministry of Internal Affairs system and so on. Does this restructuring contribute to the fight against the growing, as we understand, crime in a crisis?

Alexander Mikhlin:

If we talk about the transfer of the penal system from the Ministry of the Interior to the Ministry of Justice, then this is not a new question. He has long been solving, and his decision is being prepared. After all, when Russia was admitted to the Council of Europe, the transfer of correctional institutions, investigative insulators from the Ministry of Internal Affairs to the Ministry of Justice was one of the conditions for admission of our country to the Council of Europe. This question is not easy, and he demanded a certain training, and it was carried out. And now we can say that these institutions are almost transferred. I say “almost” because the relevant laws were adopted by the State Duma, and they passed the Federation Council and signed by the President, in addition, an order of the Minister of Internal Affairs was issued to transfer these institutions, but there is still no resolution of the Council of Ministers, which was supposed to be in the last month, because these institutions should be transferred from September 1. But, apparently, now the government is not up to this, and therefore the signing of this decree by the government was somewhat dragged on. I think that this, in principle, will not change anything.

Lev Roitman:

Thank you, Professor Mikhlin. Leonid Nikitinsky, can one think that the criminal world did not notice this perestroika at all?

Leonid Nikitinsky:

I think that most likely it will not notice, and most likely, I think that you exaggerate the depth of this reform. Not so long ago I talked with Yuri Kalinin, who in the rank of Deputy Minister will lead the Guin, he headed this system for 10 years, working in the Ministry of Internal Affairs, then he was expelled from the Ministry of Internal Affairs under Kulikov, by the way, apparently, unjustly, and Stepashin picked him up, he then headed the Ministry of Justice. That is, the same person leads this system, the same people continue to work there, that is, only the sign changes, nothing more. But this change of the sign should most likely, most likely, affect the position of both prisoners and investigatives in investigative insulators. Because, for example, Kalinin gave me such an example, I, unfortunately, do not remember the figure, but the former Minister of Internal Affairs Kulikov took about two billion rubles from the Guin budget to other needs, he put it so gently, "for other needs", most likely it is just for Chechnya. So, in the Ministry of Justice, the Minister of Justice does not even have such a temptation - he has nowhere to take this money, and secondly, if you take numbers, now Guin will correlate with the Ministry of Justice as a dump truck with a car and another question who will command whom. And therefore, those who are sadly in correctional institutions, I think that they will benefit from this.

Arkady Vaxberg:

It seems to me that we missed one link in the reasoning, absolutely necessary, although there are a lot of such missed links, we will not be able to touch them in our short conversation, but we still need to talk about one thing. When we are talking about the growth of crime, this is directly related to the level of disclosure of crimes. It seems to me that our level is extremely low and, I think that this is a common place, but one cannot help but remember. Today we witnessed the visual and convincing confirmation of the textbook thesis that we always attributed to Lenin (and Lenin himself, by the way, did not attribute it to himself rightly, because it knew that it was open for a long time, without him and before him), of course, the thesis about the preventive significance of punishment, as a factor that restrains crime. So, there is no inevitability today and at all - this is well known to everyone. The risk of punishment for criminals has decreased so much that many simply do not take it into account. This is such a banality that, it would seem, is not even convenient to use in a serious conversation, but without this, in my opinion, nothing can be understood. Today, with the help of one crime - bribes - we can avoid responsibility for any other crimes. And this factor is so powerfully affected by the fact that it was customary to call us a moral and psychological climate in society earlier, and the state of crime itself, whatever measures are taken, no matter what reorganization, no matter how wonderful it is in its plan - it will not give any results, because this factor powerfully affects the state of crime. And when the Minister Stepashin in his very important and useful, in my opinion, public report on the growth of crime, gave various numbers, I would still like to understand: this is what statistical data, this is about crimes that have been disclosed and established by the court verdict, or these are statements about the commission of some offenses, crimes that still require disclosure and may never be, may never be. disclosed?

Lev Roitman:

Thank you, Arkady Iosifovich, you posed a question. Before me is the message that the Minister of Internal Affairs of Russia Sergey Stepashin. I quote him: "Crime disclosure has grown by 10%", refers to the first three quarters of this year. What does it mean? With this question to Professor Mikhlin.

Alexander Mikhlin:

If we are talking about the disclosure of crimes, then the number of initiated criminal cases is taken as the basis, that is, the number of registered crimes. Some of them are disclosed, some remains unexpressed, that is, the perpetrators are not installed-this is the percentage of disclosure. But then there is a collection of materials, proving these crimes and committing them by this person. And here, of course, there may be cases of termination of affairs due to unprovenness, cases of justification by the court. Of course, it would be the best and objective indicator - this is the number of persons who are convicted by the court, that is, in respect of whom convict sentences are issued. But these are facts that are very difficult to compare, because in the first case we are talking about the statistics of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, in the second case we are talking about the statistics of the Ministry of Justice, and they are very comparable. And from them it is impossible to draw any conclusion about what percentage of crimes is disclosed.

Lev Roitman:

Thank you, Professor Mikhlin. I say purely abstractly, looking from here: thank God, because the courts that do not justify are judges.

Leonid Nikitinsky:

I will once again refer to a meeting with General Vasiliev, who had a guild of judicial reporters, he just said very interestingly about the indicators that, on the one hand, the indicators that the Ministry of Internal Affairs are traditionally oriented to, and even in the sense that, they say, any crime should be disclosed - this is absolute stupidity. Any crime cannot be disclosed either technically or by virtue of the objective balance of power. So he gave such an example that the disclosure of a terrorist act in the Kotlyakovsky cemetery required the creation of a group of 100 best operatives, that is, it can be calculated that at the same time 100 of these operatives could reveal 300-400 of some other crimes there. And he said a very interesting, very controversial piece that now the minister Stepashin even issued such an order that the work of the internal affairs bodies would be evaluated not by the indicators how much it was identified and sent to the court, but by the regulations of the budget. A very controversial position so that I repeat it after Vasiliev, it needs too much time, but, in general, it is about focusing not on indicators, but on efficiency, it may even be a kind of amnesty of economic crime and to agree with them to pay taxes on some new principles with them. This approach is controversial, but it may be really effective, you just need to see how much strength and, most importantly, people have people. For this, honest, qualified employees are needed, they are not in the Ministry of Internal Affairs - this is a separate problem.

Lev Roitman:

Thank you, Leonid Nikitinsky. Well, evaluating historically, now the Russian criminal investigation department is 80 years old, and we can say that maybe a controversial approach will help in something to solve the problem, because many indisputable, seemingly, approaches did not solve it.