The criminal association: problems of legislative regulation and application practice

The criminal law characterizes the criminal association as a structured organized group or an association of organized groups operating under the unified leadership, whose members are united to jointly commit one or more serious or extremely serious crimes to directly or indirectly obtain a financial or other pecuniary gain (Para. 4 of Article 35 of the Criminal Code). There are two types of criminal association (criminal organization): a special kind of the organized group and an association of organized groups. The organized group as a kind of a criminal association is characterized by three additional features. First, it is aims at to jointly committing one or more serious or extremely serious crimes, as defined respectively in Part 1 and Part 2 of Article 15 of the Criminal Code. Second, these crimes are committed to directly or indirectly obtain a financial or other pecuniary gain. Third, the organized group is structured, i.e. consists of stable units that coordinate their actions, interact to implement the common criminal intentions, distribute functions and have special areas of practice to perform specific actions in committing crimes and other forms of criminal activities. The structural unit of the criminal association is a functionally and (or) geographically isolated group, consisting of two or more persons, who conduct criminal activity as a part of and in accordance with the objectives of the criminal association. These units can commit individual crimes as well as carry out other tasks to ensure the criminal association functioning. The union of organized groups forms a criminal association, if they act under the unified leadership, have strong ties, jointly plan and participate in one or more serious or extremely serious crimes, and jointly participate in other actions undertaken by such an association. When the institution of the criminal association was introduced into the criminal legislation, practitioners have got some hope for a successful fight against organized crime. However, the first attempts to apply Article 210 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation showed that, due to substantial uncertainty of the term, the "criminal association" was interpreted in a broader sense. In some cases is was interpreted as a usual organized group or a group that has arisen on the basis of previous concert, in others - as a criminological concept of professional criminal environment.

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