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Medvedev will continue to liberalize the Criminal Code

On March 17, at a meeting with the participation of Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, a draft law was discussed, which is designed to ensure further liberalization of criminal legislation. In particular, it is proposed to transfer insult, slander, as well as causing property damage without signs of theft from criminal offenses to administrative ones. The government must discuss these amendments within a month.

Decriminalization of certain crimes is not the only point of the proposed reform. Judging by the statement of the Minister of Justice Alexander Konovalov , it is also planned to soften the punishment for smuggling goods that, in principle, can be transported across the border (that is, if we are not talking about drugs, weapons and the like). It is not entirely clear whether this article is intended to be completely decriminalized (according to Gazeta.ru , which managed to get acquainted with the bill, it is decriminalization that is intended).

The third measure that is proposed to be implemented is the introduction of forced labor as a punishment. “Those who will be sentenced to this type of punishment will be in specialized correctional centers, but at the same time under a much softer regime than the regime of imprisonment,” Konovalov explained. The state's expenses for their maintenance will be reimbursed from the convicts' salaries, as well as damages to the victims. According to the minister, “some part, up to 25 percent, will go to the convicted person.”

Currently, the Criminal Code provides for punishment in the form of compulsory labor and correctional labor. In the first case, the convicted person is simply engaged in free socially useful labor in his free time from his main job or study (no more than four hours a day). Punishment in the form of correctional labor is also not associated with imprisonment and is imposed on a convicted person who does not have a main place of work (an amount determined by the court is deducted from his salary in favor of the state).

In other words, the proposed forced labor will become a kind of line between the now used forced labor, not associated with imprisonment, on the one hand, and serving a sentence behind bars, on the other. This step is in line with the measures taken earlier. This project was discussed a year ago.

The point of introducing forced labor is to allow the court to punish a criminal without sending him to prison, but also without limiting himself to rather mild measures, such as compulsory or correctional labor. On March 7, the president already signed a law that excluded the lower limits of sanctions in the form of imprisonment for 68 crimes provided for by the Criminal Code. However, the upper limits of punishment remained the same. That is, if previously for a certain type of crime a convicted person was in any case threatened with prison, now the court will be able, taking into account all the circumstances, to apply a more lenient punishment.

about the need to liberalize criminal legislation The president spoke both in his last message to the Federal Assembly in November 2010 and in the previous one . The same theme was heard in the 2008 message . the order on the formation of a working group to improve judicial legislation Medvedev signed on May 20, 2008, two weeks after taking office as president. Among the priorities for the commission was the humanization of justice.

During a meeting on March 17, 2011, President Dmitry Medvedev reiterated that criminal legislation should “give people the opportunity to reform.” “Today, the main trend in the state’s criminal policy should not be the ferocity of punishment, but its inevitability and adequacy,” Konovalov supported the president. Thus, the president decided to implement his long-standing slogan “Freedom is better than lack of freedom” in the literal, direct sense.

The widespread use of non-custodial sentences, as the president said in his message to the Federal Assembly on November 30, 2010, will help reduce “the replenishment of the criminal world with a large number of new personnel.” This means that after being imprisoned, the likelihood that the convicted person will join the criminal world increases. According to the president, this is “especially relevant in cases where we are talking about young people, teenagers, and those who have broken the law for the first time.”

The second officially stated goal of liberalization is to free up places in prisons, which are known to be overcrowded. In any case, Minister of Justice Alexander Konovalov, speaking about replacing punishment in the form of imprisonment with a fine or correctional labor for many types of crimes, noted in October 2010 that such a measure would “relieve the workload in colonies by at least one third.” Under the article “Insult,” which is now proposed to be transferred to the category of administrative offenses, imprisonment is not provided for now, and in the case of slander and causing property damage without signs of theft, the punishment in the form of imprisonment will probably be abolished.

According to Vedomosti , it is also planned to seriously soften penalties for economic crimes, replacing imprisonment with a fine. From Medvedev’s point of view, such crimes, as a rule, “are committed for the first time and do not pose a public danger to the country.”

It must be said that some of the measures taken are somewhat alarming. As explained by retired police major general Vladimir Ovchinsky, the elimination of the lower limit of the sanction in the form of imprisonment leads to the possibility of imposing a minimum punishment (up to two months of imprisonment), for example, for causing grievous bodily harm, resulting in the death of the victim through negligence, for robbery, robbery, extortion. On March 14, it became known that in protest against the presidential initiatives, Ovchinsky resigned from his post as adviser to the Constitutional Court. His dissatisfaction, in particular, was caused by the intention to “decriminalize commodity smuggling.”

The success of the experiment with mitigation of sentences will obviously be judged by how often those who manage to avoid prison will commit new crimes while free. Experts will have to analyze these statistics.

Timofey Zabrodov

Free everyone

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