01 March 2012, 22:11 Society

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Juvenile criminals will look younger

Anastasia Berseneva , Daria Zagvozdina , Vera Kramskoy close 100%

Deputies propose lowering the age of criminal responsibility

Reuters The State Duma plans to lower the age of criminal responsibility from 14 to 12 years. It is expected that the document will be submitted to the lower house before the end of the spring session. Experts differ in their assessments of this proposal, but most believe that the initiative is premature. It would be preferable to develop a system of crime prevention, education and rehabilitation.

On Thursday, State Duma deputies announced their readiness to write a bill lowering the age of criminal responsibility from 14 to 12 years. , State Duma member for constitutional legislation and state building, told RIA Novosti “If we have time, the bill will be submitted to the State Duma in the spring session, if not, then in the autumn,” Vladimir Ponevezhsky .

The need to amend the criminal legislation of deputies was brought about by a discussion of this idea in the Public Chamber .

We are talking about lowering the age of criminal responsibility to 12 years only for serious and especially serious crimes, such as the murder of two or more persons.

Currently, such crimes are punishable from the age of 14, and for all others - from the age of 16.

According to Ponevezhsky, recently there has been an increase in cases of serious crimes committed by teenagers under 14 years of age. Moreover, the murders are particularly cruel, and it is impossible to bring the perpetrators to justice due to their young age.

A younger age at which responsibility begins has long been successfully used in Western countries. “In some countries, criminal liability begins at the age of 10, somewhere around 12,” Rustem Maksudov, an expert in the field of juvenile justice and head of restorative justice programs at the Judicial and Legal Reform Center, explained to Gazeta.Ru. “In some US states, children who commit a particularly serious crime can be sentenced to life imprisonment.”

When discussing the question of how much lowering the age of responsibility is necessary in Russia, experts disagreed. The issue has the right to be considered, says the plenipotentiary representative of the government of the Russian Federation in the highest courts, Mikhail Barshchevsky . He explained to Gazeta.Ru that children still understand that murder is a crime.

“But, of course, we can’t talk about prison here,” Barshchevsky said.

“It all depends on the punishment,” Rustem Maksudov agrees with him. — If from the age of 12 there will be criminal punishment and, accordingly, imprisonment, that’s one thing, if it’s administrative responsibility, that’s another. Perhaps educational work can be carried out. Although mass educational work in the context of juvenile justice is difficult.”

Moscow lawyer who deals with criminal cases, Konstantin Rivkin, agrees that teenagers, even at the age of 13, commit daring crimes: “They brutally cut, rape, rob. Therefore, there is a reason for criminal liability when it comes to such crimes.” “It’s too early to judge at the age of 12, but until the age of 13 you can safely lower the bar,” Rivkin told Gazeta.Ru. — There is both a positive and a negative point here. There is no certainty that our law enforcement agencies and courts will not abuse such criminal tools and, in cases where teenagers need to be treated, they will be imprisoned.”

“Both psychologists and doctors have long proven that at the age of 12 a child has no connection between the committed action and awareness of the consequences,” noted Valery Borshchev , chairman of the permanent chamber for human rights of the political advisory council under the President of the Russian Federation, member Moscow Helsinki Group. In his opinion, deputies were “influenced by the myth” that the severity of punishment can stop or reduce the number of crimes among teenagers. “In fact, such a measure, on the contrary, will increase crime in our country, because recidivism among juvenile offenders is 40%,” says Borshchev. “In fact, every second person who ends up in a correctional colony is already an inveterate criminal.”

“In colonies for minors there are their own concepts, there is a very high percentage of so-called neglected, that is, raped teenagers, the atmosphere is very difficult,” the human rights activist frightens.

Once there, the teenager is saturated with this atmosphere. “We are actually preparing a repeat offender,” says Borshchev. — Yes, among young children there are those who commit terrible crimes, but, as a rule, they suffer from serious mental illnesses and need psychological help. No severity of punishment will cure them of this.” According to him, prevention methods should be used against child and teenage crime, as they are more effective. However, not all is well with prevention in Russia. The human rights activist recalled that until 1980, all educational colonies were under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Education , and then they were transferred to the penal authorities - now the Federal Penitentiary Service . According to Borshchev, educational colonies for minors should be returned back to the education system and a network of serious medical institutions should be created in them, which will provide psychological assistance to disadvantaged teenagers.

The Commissioner for Children's Rights under the President of the Russian Federation, Pavel Astakhov , also opposes the proposal to lower the age of criminal responsibility and considers it unreasonable and excessive. “We have not created conditions to help children who have stumbled; the prevention of juvenile delinquency is at a low level.

A system for the correction and rehabilitation of children who have committed crimes has not been created.

You can imprison all juvenile offenders, but this will not solve the problem. They will only become hostages of the system and will never be able to return to normal life,” Astakhov believes. He recalled that today there is a slowdown in the rate of development of both boys and girls. This is confirmed by data from the Russian Ministry of Health and Social Development and leading medical centers,” the children’s ombudsman told Gazeta.Ru. “Modern Russian girls, on average, reach psychophysiological maturity by the age of 18, and boys by the age of 20.” In his opinion, these data indicate the inadmissibility of lowering the age of criminal responsibility.

Lawyer Igor Trunov reminded Gazeta.Ru about the absence of juvenile justice in Russia: “There is no juvenile justice in Russia, therefore the proportion of minors in prisons is high and is so strikingly different from the proportion of adolescents in US prisons, where the oldest traditions of juvenile justice in the world. For example, in England there is a flexible system of measures of criminal legal influence on a child, differentiated depending on the age of the defendant and the severity of the crime committed. As a result, children who commit a crime between the ages of 10 and 14 are placed under supervision, required to attend a special visitation center regularly for a specified period of time, or required to refrain from committing certain actions for a specified period of time.” A similar system needs to be developed in Russia, the lawyer is sure, and not send juvenile criminals to jail.

The initiative of the deputies will actually return Russia to the first half of the 20th century - then the laws stipulated responsibility for children under 12 years old.

The age criterion for criminal liability was significantly reduced in 1935 by the resolution of the Central Executive Committee and the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR “On measures to combat juvenile delinquency.” The resolution established the possibility of criminal liability for minors convicted of theft, causing violence, bodily harm, mutilation, murder or attempted murder, with the application of all criminal penalties (except the death penalty) starting from the age of 12. And in 1940, criminal penalties were added for 12-year-olds “for acts likely to cause a train wreck.” Only in the second half of the 20th century was it decided to punish for committing serious crimes from the age of 14.