2 results
Overuse in the Russian Criminal Justice System
- from PART III - NATIONAL REPORTS 3ÈME PARTIE. RAPPORTS NATIONAUX
- Edited by Piet Hein van Kempen, Manon Jendly
-
- Book:
- Overuse in the Criminal Justice System
- Published by:
- Intersentia
- Published online:
- 26 June 2019
- Print publication:
- 14 May 2019, pp 529-540
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
INTRODUCTION
It is well known that the criminal justice system in the Soviet Union was needlessly repressive. It featured the death penalty and massive political crackdowns, especially during the Stalinist period. Gorbachev's perestroika made the system significantly more humane. Unfortunately, over the past fifteen to twenty years, the criminal justice system in Russia has gradually become increasingly repressive. Russian law enforcement is still dominated by repressive approaches, as I will show in more detail below.
OVERUSE OF CRIMINALIZATION
The new Russian Federal Criminal Code (1996) was relatively moderate in terms of the number of the actions and practices it criminalized. However, the original version criminalized such acts as “giving offence” (Article 130), “disorderly conduct” (Article 213), “imprudent property destruction or damage” (Article 168), as well as numerous so-called economic crimes, which were often only shady business practices, for example, knowingly false advertising (Article 182), illegal business (Article 181), and illegal loans (Article 176). These practices should have, in fact, been classified as misdemeanours or civil wrongs, not criminal offenses.
The Russian national legislature, the State Duma, has gradually criminalized more and more actions and practices, potentially making every citizen a criminal. For example, among many other actions, “offending the feelings of religious believers” (Article 148, as amended in 2013), “illegal entry into a secured area” (Article 215.4, adopted in 2015), “undesirable organizations” (Article 284.1, adopted in 2015), and “repeated violations of regulations for organizing and holding rallies, demonstrations, marches, and pickets” (Article 212.1, adopted in 2014) have been criminalized.
All of this has opened up huge opportunities for prosecuting any and all Russian citizens, as evidenced by the following criminal cases.
On 19 February 2012, five young women from the art group Pussy Riot performed the so-called punk prayer “Mother of God, Drive Putin Away” at Christ the Saviour Cathedral in Moscow. On 5 March 2012, three of the young women in the group (Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, Maria Alyokhina, and Yekaterina Samutsevich) were arrested. On 17 August 2012, they were convicted of “disorderly conduct motivated by religious hatred or enmity” (Article 213.2) and sentenced to two years in prison.
Women in prison in Russia
- from Part III - National Reports: 3ÈME Partie Rapports Nationaux
- Edited by Piet Hein van Kempen, Maartje Krabbe
-
- Book:
- Women in Prison
- Published by:
- Intersentia
- Published online:
- 25 September 2018
- Print publication:
- 20 March 2017, pp 645-662
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
Women's penal colonies are zones of absolute lawlessness.
Irek MurtazinINTRODUCTION
Social control of criminality is a major problem in the contemporary world. Street crime, organized crime, violent crime, terrorism and so forth affect people and give rise to “moral panics” and “fear of crime”. Legislators, politicians, police and criminal justice officials try (often habitually) repressive methods to gain control over criminality. However, traditional measures have not obtained the desired results.
Social control is a mechanism for the self-organization and self-preservation of society through the establishment and maintenance of a normative order, involving the elimination, neutralization or minimization of deviant behavior, including crime. Social control of criminality includes general methods of social control - punishment and crime prevention.
Some have argued that a “crisis of punishment” exists, a crisis of criminal justice, of criminal law's control of criminality, including control of the police. The basic trends in the current western theory (and practice, in some countries) of social control over criminality include recognition of the irrationality and inefficiency of punishment as revenge, a change in social control strategy from “war” to “peacemaking”, a search for non-repressive alternative measures of social reaction and a prioritizing of crime prevention.
Criminal justice, police and penitentiary systems are the result of the general social, economic, cultural and political condition. The contemporary Russian post-Soviet criminal justice system, police and penitentiary systems have a complicated history. They have two main sources: first, the old tsarist system, which was part of the so-called Continental legal system but which had a genuine policy of repression; secondly, the Soviet “socialist” system. It is clear the communist regime was quite terrible. As a result of the unique experiment to establish a social utopia (the slogan on the gate of the Solovki Gulag camp read, “Happiness for everyone through violence”), the country was thrown off the path of civilization.
Gorbachev's perestroika (“reconstruction”) was a necessary attempt to save the State through reform. Khrushchev had made a similar attempt (the so-called Thaw), but Gorbachev's reforms were the most radical. However, these reforms did not bring about their desired end, something that may not have been Gorbachev's fault but certainly was his misfortune.
The contemporary Russian penal system is “better” than the Soviet Gulag but it is still repressive, an offense to human dignity, and especially agonizing for women and adolescents.