On prevention of offences in Russian Federation

The article considers the debatable questions from the bill ''On bases of system of prevention of offences in the Russian Federation''. The conformity of the norms in the bill to the principles established in it is analyzed. The necessity of adoption of a law on preventive maintenance of offences in general and prevention of crimes, in particular, in modern conditions of the growing crime is obvious. In 2000 the Government of the Russian Federation in the State Duma introduced a bill ''On bases of the state system of prevention of crimes'', which later was not considered. From the moment of publication the bill received considerable public reaction, both negative and positive. In turn it would be desirable to pay attention to the positions that need some completion. It is strange enough that the developers of the bill have not used the terminology accepted by criminology science, which actually is engaged in working out of the theory of crime prevention. Article 6 of the bill ''Principles of functioning of system of preventive maintenance of offences'' fixes the principle of scientific validity. Thus, the definition given in Item 3 of Article 2 seems incomplete: preventive maintenance of offences is measures of social, legal, educational and other character directed at neutralization or elimination of the reasons and conditions of fulfilment of offences, consisting in purposeful, precautionary influence on persons with antisocial behavior, both in their own interests, and in interests of the society, and also directed at decreasing the risks of persons to become victims of criminal encroachments. In other words, preventive influence according to the bill, will be imposed only on persons with antisocial behavior whereas it is known that preventive maintenance of offences in general and prevention of crimes, in particular, is a multilevel system of state and public measures directed at elimination, easing or neutralization of the criminality determinant. The legislation on preventive maintenance of offences is accepted in many subjects of the Russian Federation. It is necessary to hope that the federal law will not keep itself waiting and will represent the document containing a complete system of preventive maintenance of offences in the country.

Keywords

Authors

References