Trends of alternative sanction application in Russia

In modern Russian system of punishment provided by the criminal law the most essential drawbacks are the following: insufficient development and account of social-criminological bases of the penal system in the whole, disregard of the typical features of separate categories in it; ''excess'' of some criminal sentences (for example, for independent types of imprisonment, two types of penalties limiting the labor rights of citizens, death penalty fixed by law and dormant for over a decade); flouting of a series of fundamental international acts (introduction of forced labor into the Criminal Code); discrepancy between the legal and real rep-ressivity (severity) of some kinds of punishment (fine, especially at a new large rate, compulsory community service); unjustified competition between penalties and other similar measures of criminal-legal nature (restraint in the 2010 edition, sustained sentence); insufficiently distinct or incomplete definition of content and grounds for imposing some penalties (restraint, disqualification to hold certain positions or to practice certain professions); lack of the required steps in the system of criminal penalties, including an intermediate punishment between freedom and constraint; discrepancy between the ideal (fixed by law) and real (applied in practice) logic of sentencing and use of other criminal-legal sanctions; violation of crucial criminal law principles when defining the content and order of sentence exercising (restraint in the 2010 edition, disqualification to hold certain positions or to practice certain professions, fine imposed on a minor); insufficient grounds, controversy and inconsistency of many new laws of the recent years. The drawbacks of the system of punishment fixed by law and its use escalate due to the imperfection of the organizational legal mechanism of their implementation. It finds expression in discrepancy between the law (the Criminal Correctional Code of the Russian Federation) and subordinate legislation of the Ministry of Justice that regulate the execution of most of the alternative measures; in excessive subordinate legislation (the Ministry of Justice instructions repeat the provisions of the Criminal Correctional Code, several instructions on similar objects of legal control); in the lack of required unification (in the law and subordinate legislation); in the falling of the Criminal Correctional Code behind the sector-wide legislation (for example, the 2003 Federal Law on local government that changed the structure of governmental bodies); in neglecting in laws and subordinate legislation of the change of the organizational structure in the correctional system (transformation of correctional inspectorates into branches); in the typically bureaucratic constant urge to non-stop reformation, which results in insecurity of correctional inspectorates' employees, instability of the staff, loss of important reference points. The need is vital to move from spontaneous outer improvement of the system of punishment to its deep modernization in the Criminal Code with the account of current political, social and economic conditions, changing criminological environment on the basis of the principle of required sufficiency. The first aspect means the system of punishment should have no gaps or discrepancy preventing the full-scale imposition of criminal sanctions. That is why the number of penalties should not exceed the need of criminal policy and features of certain categories of guilty persons. The second aspect means there should be no sanctions repeating one another, thus devaluing and preventing their full-scale imposition.

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