Criminal liability for battery: problems of regulation and implementation

The partial decriminalization of beatings in 2016 eliminated the stability and universality of courts' assessment of the minimum number of blows that constitute "beatings." The author attributes the revealed decrease in demands for the number of strokes to a reduction in private principles in the content of the object of criminal law protection under Article 116 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation. An extended interpretation of "beatings" entails "devaluation" of the danger of the corresponding type of violence, which is punishable more severely than minor harm to health, and coincides in terms of punishability with the sanction for minor harm to health caused under qualifying circumstances similar to those stipulated in Article of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation. The provisions of Part 2 of Article 14 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation make it possible to terminate proceedings on a crime under Articles 116, Part 1 or 2 of Article 1161 of the Criminal Code in cases where beatings resulted in single blows. Being distinguished by the legal ambiguity of crimes for which a criminal record gives a subject a special status, the composition of Part 2 of Article 1161 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation in practice is attributed to persons whose criminal experience in sentences is described by stating violent and (or) mercenary-violent crimes. Having criminalized beatings involving public demonstrations of violence in 2024, the legislator raised the issue of the permissibility of imputing Article 116 of the Criminal Code to a person posting destructive content after a criminal assault. Linking the criminal nature of the act with the availability of violence provided by the perpetrator shifts the moment of the end of the crime to the publication of the unlawful encroachment. The desire to withstand the implementation of the ban within the framework of the provisions of the law on the stages of a crime will determine a restrictive interpretation of the "new" objective sign, aimed at imputing art. 116 of the Criminal Code to persons broadcasting live violence. The narrowing of the scope of the specified norm "devalues" the danger of criminal attacks with delayed demonstration on social networks, which reduces the significance of the changes made to the criminal law. A wide range of normative accounting of violence in the construction of trains determine the need to study the materials of a criminal case on a crime for which a person has a criminal record in order to identify the fact of "use of violence" that is significant for the qualification of beatings under Part 2 of Article 1161 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation. The high level of criminal activity of convicts under Part 2 of Article 1161 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation actualizes in practice the issues of taking into account the criminal experience of the offender when sentencing. The implementation of the law in this part is not stable and universal. In some cases, courts consider recidivism as an aggravating circumstance (paragraph "a" of Part 1 of Article 63 of the Criminal Code), without applying Article 68 of the Criminal Code, in others they see grounds for applying both paragraphs "a" of Part 1 of Article 63 and Part 2 of Article 68 of the Criminal Code. A significant part of the indictments are decisions in which recidivism is not taken into account as an aggravating circumstance, but the court appoints punishment taking into account the restrictions established by Part 2 of Article 68 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation. By establishing a criminal law mechanism for increasing punishment in case of recidivism, which limits the discretion of the court in determining the type and amount of punishment, Part 2 of Article 68 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation may be applied only if recidivism is established as an aggravating circumstance. The refusal to take into account paragraph "a" of Part 1 of Article 63 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation negates the importance of this type of plurality in judicial penalization. The author declares no conflicts of interests.

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