The Supreme court of Russia proposed 80 criminal offences of minor gravity to amount to misconduct and to release accused from punishment. A new concept is provided for the Russians, first-time offenders, explained TASS the court Chairman Vyacheslav Lebedev.
The concept of “criminal misconduct” will appear in the Criminal and Criminal procedure codes after a review of the bill by the plenary of the Supreme court. According to Lebedev, the action is between the criminal offense and administrative offense not involving deprivation of freedom, has a short Statute of limitations, and does not entail a criminal record.
It is planned to retrain more than 80 criminal offences of minor gravity, including illegal businesses and illegal banking activities. In 2016, it sentenced more than 40 thousand people. Legislators hope that the reclassification of these crimes to misdemeanors would allow the release of convicts who have committed such acts for the first time and to apply measures of criminal-legal character (a fine, compulsory or correctional labour).
“The person lived worthy life. Committed a crime for the first time, accidentally, and he repents, and does not know how to fix it. Why is this state of man the state, society does not support it?” — said the initiative Lebedev.
He added that every year, more than half the criminal cases in the courts concern crimes of small weight (in relation to around half a million defendants a year).