The Criminal Law and Penal Policy in Relation to Parole

The aim of this article was to develop proposals in relation to the conditional early release from serving a sentence (parole) based on the analysis of the development of the criminal law and penal enforcement policy of the Russian Federation. Throughout its development, the institution of parole in criminal law has been improved more than once. This happened because the institution of parole is in a kind of a “wind rose” of the criminal law policy. The analysis of the changes and additions to Art. 79 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation showed that they can be divided into three groups according to the direction of the expression of trends in the criminal law policy. The first includes changes and additions that express the tendency to humanize the policy towards the perpetrators of crimes. The second one contains amendments and additions aimed at tightening the criminal law policy in relation to convicted persons serving sentences. The third group is changes and additions that are technical, partly procedural, in nature, which do not determine the trends in the development of the criminal law policy in the implementation of parole. In contrast to the criminal law policy, the penal enforcement policy is developing in a slightly different way. Firstly, there were not so many changes in the parole procedure compared to the criminal legislation. In total, eight laws were adopted that amended Article 175 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, while three of them were more technical and did not change the procedure for parole. Secondly, out of eight of these laws, only three, in one way or another, contained changes and additions that complicated the parole procedure and thus indicated a tightening of the penal enforcement policy in relation to convicted persons in this area. It seems advisable to gradually reduce the significance of the behavior of a convicted person in places of deprivation of liberty among the criteria for the court's conclusion that a person does not need to serve a full sentence for correction. Along with punishments and rewards as indicators of behavior during serving a sentence, the degree of preservation and (or) restoration of socially useful connections of the convicted person should be taken into account. It is not necessary to reject the idea of establishing a score system for granting parole if the convicted person reaches the maximum number of the established criteria. Naturally, the number of the criteria, their “cost”, as well as the “score system” itself are topics for further discussions and a separate independent theoretical and practical study. In order to encourage the lawful behavior of convicts in relation to such alternative punishments as restriction of liberty, deprivation of the right to hold certain positions or engage in certain activities, restrictions on military service and mandatory work, it is also necessary to introduce the institution of parole.

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