On some criminologically significant indicators of juvenile delinquency in the Russian Federation

According to the official statistics, juvenile delinquency in the Russian Federation in recent years has demonstrates a steady downward trend, which allows asserting that if this trend continues at the appropriate pace, then in a few years our state will be able "to eliminate" juvenile delinquency. However, the author points out that this decrease in the registered crime of minors has received an unpromising explanation among Russian criminologists. The dynamics of juvenile delinquency is subject to fluctuations, which are explained as objective reasons related to changes in the general social, economic, and political situation in the country, as well as legislative reform (partial decriminalisation of hooliganism, transfer of Part 2 Article 158 of the Criminal Code into the category of crimes of medium gravity), improvement of the preliminary investigation system, preventive activities, and subjective reasons, mainly related to subjective factors of crime statistics. The author emphasises that juvenile delinquency has always been characterised by a rather high latency and describes how often the identified minors, who have committed crimes, are convicted to serve their sentences, whether they commit a crime repeatedly, and whether there is a criminological recidivism in their actions. Having analysed the structure of convicts who committed crimes at a minor age in the Russian Federation from 2012 to 2016, the author concludes that among them there are many of those with criminological recidivism in their activities. Thus, the share of all convicts who committed crimes at a minor age, with unex-punged and outstanding convictions during the indicated period of time, remained significant and amounted to about 18%. About 18% of persons who committed crimes at a minor age were not legally judged, though they committed two or more crimes for the first time. In fact, the same proportion accounts for persons who committed crimes at a minor age, who were not judged, but registered with a specialised state body. The author notes that many of them were not promptly brought to criminal or other liability, there was actual recidivism in their actions, and they felt their impunity and confidently continued their criminal or other antisocial activity. Individual preventive work had many drawbacks. It is obvious that the lack of timely organised and sufficient preventive activities contributes to the deterioration of the criminal situation, including the latent form, which has not been taken into account in the system of state statistical registration of crimes.

Keywords

Authors

References