Capacity of criminal punishment and its impact on recidivism

The article dwells on the penalties that are imposed on persons for repeated crimes, regardless the punishment they have already served. The author also analyses the dynamics and structure of recidivism which is determined not so much by the traditional causes and circumstances as by numerous factors arising from the modern socio-economic crisis. Recidivism is a special term introduced into law from medicine. It comes from the Latin "recidirens", which means "to return, to recover". The literal interpretation of the word allows any return to the criminal behavior to be considered as recidivism. Recidivism implies that offenses are committed by people who have previously been prosecuted. Among other types of crimes, recidivism is one of the most dangerous due to its high public danger: people committing more than one crime demonstrate a steady desire to continue their criminal behavior, with criminal skills, sustainable anti-social attitudes and beliefs fixed in their minds. Recidivism forms the nucleus of criminality. Repeated offences committed within the validity period of criminal conviction are evident of a steady desire continue the criminal activity, of the criminalization of personality. The problem of recidivism is multidimensional, i.e. it has criminal, remedial, criminological and criminally-executive aspects. Legal science shows no unanimity on the question of the general concept of recidivism and recidivist. Recidivism is viewed as a substructure of crime in the country and its regions. It is understood as a relatively massive, historically volatile, transient, social and legal phenomenon including a set of crimes committed in a certain period of time in a particular area by persons who have previously committed crimes. The repeated offence is a set of socially dangerous acts stipulated by the criminal law that are consistently committed by the same person after previous conviction for a crime.

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