Russian criminal law policy in regard to juveniles: issues of law-making and law enforcement

The subjects for study in the paper are the standards of Russian criminal legislation regulating juveniles' liability. The author's aim is to determine the degree of accordance between the current propositions of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, relating to defining juveniles' liability, and their age peculiarities. In the article the author proceeds from the concept of natural law, acknowledgment and imperishable value of every human personality, irrespectively of their qualities and behaviour. The idea of the article was determined on the grounds of the works of child and developmental psychology researchers. The author also used special scientific methods: comparative law and technical. It is noted in the article that not all Russian researchers support the legislator's position respectively the lower age of criminal liability, which is 14. In their opinion, it should be lowered to the age of 12. The article analyzes the arguments adduced by the authors of this position. Disagreeing with the stated position, the author of the article adduces other arguments based on the propositions of age and pedagogical psychology, contemporary criminology that allow claiming the necessity of preserving the lower age of 14 for instituting criminal proceedings against a person. It is mentioned in the article that the issue of determining the age of criminal liability is not reduced to the establishing of the lower age for instituting criminal proceedings against a person, it is much broader. In particular, the Russian Criminal Code states that criminal proceedings for committing certain crimes, when the aggrieved person is under-aged, can be instituted against a person who has reached the age of 14, 16 or 18. Naturally, this raises the question: what was the legislator governed by when establishing particular age ranges for instituting criminal proceedings? Analyzing certain articles of the Special Part of the Russian Criminal Code, the author concludes that it is frequently impossible to logically explain the position of the legislator establishing certain age of liability for a crime. The existing problems do not contribute to achieving the purpose of criminal law relating to juveniles which consists in only using the least severe punitive measures.

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