Criminal Law Sanctions for Corruption-Related Crimes: an Opinion of the Scientific Community and a View of the Law Enforcement Officer
Gavrilov B.Ya. Criminal law sanctions for corruption-related crimes: an opinion of the scientific community and a view of the law enforcement officer. Penitentiary Science, 2022, vol. 16, no. 4 (60), pp. 388–396. doi: 10.46741/2686-9764.2022.60.4.005.
Introduction: the article analyzes fundamental provisions of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation in terms of criminal law sanctions for corruption-related crimes and their impact on the effectiveness of measures implemented by the law enforcement and judicial authorities to ensure fairness of punishment. Purpose: on the basis of the study of criminal legislation norms and their amendments made over the past two decades and the analysis of statistical data on criminal penalties imposed by the court for certain most common types of corruption-related crimes, to outline criminal legislation shortcomings in this sphere noted by representatives of the scientific community and law enforcement officers; to propose measures for improving criminal sanctions, capable, along with the state’s focus on the criminal liability liberalization, to lower corruption risks, thus ensuring the state security, primarily in the sphere of its economic activity. Methods: historical; comparative legal and empirical methods; theoretical methods of formal and dialectical logic, private scientific methods; legal and technical methods and the method of interpretation of specific legal norms. Results: on the basis of the analysis of the current state of criminal legislation and the amendments introduced into it since 2003 regarding liberalization of criminal law sanctions and the emerging judicial practice of imposing criminal penalties in the form of imprisonment and a fine are generally negatively assessed and the need for their improvement is justified in order to comply with realities of the fight against corruption-related crime and thereby ensure legality, justice and equality of citizens before the law and at the same time humanism in the criminal law norms implementation. Conclusions: in order to ensure these criminal law principles in relation to modern realities (new types of crimes, including their commission using information and telecommunication technologies, a significant increase in the amount of material damage caused by crimes to both the state and other economic entities and citizens), it is necessary for the legislator to take appropriate measures to improve criminal legislation and, in particular, adjust lower limits of such specific criminal law sanctions as imprisonment and a fine, the size of which today undermines effectiveness of the fight against corruption-related crimes, including those belonging to the category of not only serious, but also especially serious criminal acts.
Keywords: criminal law; corruption-related crimes; legality; justice; equality of citizens’ rights before the law; humanism; court; sentence; imprisonment; fine; judicial statistics.
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