The Effectiveness of Penalties and Other Criminal Law Measures for Minors Who Have Committed a Crime

Abstract

It is impossible to develop an effective system of penalties and other criminal law measures for minors in Russia without creating the corresponding economic, social and legal conditions. These conditions are not always taken into consideration when imposing penalties on minors who have committed crimes or taking other criminal law measures against them. The humanization of penalties imposed on juvenile delinquents, the implementation of state policy aimed at the liberalization of penalties for minors resulted in a consistently high number of minors with conditional or non-custodial sentences in comparison with the number of minors sentenced to custodial punishments or compulsory educational measures. Key indices of repeat offences by minors show that the effectiveness of non-custodial or conditional sentences is low. Research demonstrated that the highest index of repeat offences while serving a sentence is typical of minors sentenced to the limitation of freedom, correctional labor, those under a conditional sentence or those ordered to perform a community service. The number of repeat offences committed by persons sentenced to compulsory educational measures under Art. 92 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, both after they have finished a special school or a special vocational school, is much lower than the number of repeat offences committed by minors sentences to non-custodial penalties. The authors show that it is not feasible to include in the law six types of penalties for minors. It is suggested that only one type of punishment for juvenile delinquents should be left - imprisonment for a certain term. A parallel system of educational measures should be developed and included in the criminal law instead of the current Art. 90-92 of the CC of the RF, the unreasonably wide use of Art. 73 of the CC of the RF should be limited, and Clause 6.2 of Art. 88 of the CC of the RF should be abolished as it contradicts Parts 1 and 3 of Art. 73 of the CC of the RF.