Organized criminal group as a form of complicity in a crime under current legislation in Russia

Organized criminal group has been provided for in Part 3, Article 35 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation as one of the forms of complicity. A crime shall be deemed to be committed by an organized group, if it was committed by a stable group of persons who in advance united for the commission of one or more offences. We can say that according to such a definition our current criminal legislation emphasizes four characteristics of an organized group: the group consists of several people, the people have united in advance, the group is a stable one and people have united for the commission of one or more crimes. The author of the present article analyses all the characteristics above but points out that it is the characteristic of "stability" of an organized group that distinguishes it from other forms of complicity in a crime (group of people, group of people by previous concert and criminal community). Our current legislation does not give the definition of "stability", therefore the author analyzes the scientific works of other researches on this problem, the Rulings of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation where the highest judicial body tried to disclose the content of the term. The article examines the content of the UN Convention against Transnational Organized Crime that contains the term "organized criminal group": the author gives his own definition of the term on the basis of its fundamental characteristics.

Keywords

Authors

References