Criminal policy of Russia during a pandemic

¹ Federal State Public Educational Establishment of Higher Education “Management Academy of the Ministry of the Interior of the Russian Federation”, Criminal Policy Department, Moscow, Russia
² Federal state educational institution of higher education “Moscow University of the Ministry of internal Affairs of the Russian Federation named after V.Ya. Kikotya”, Operational Investigative Activities and Special Equipment Department, Moscow, Russia

^* Corresponding author: apodedkin71@mail.ru

Abstract

The consequence of the pandemic caused by COVID-19 was the introduction of social restrictions, which led to an increase in the number of users of social networks, as well as their activity on the Internet. The involvement of citizens in the digital environment has changed the targets of criminal efforts of the criminals. The public’s fear of the coronavirus was subjected to criminal exploitation, new forms and methods of theft appeared, as a result, the spectrum of crime shifted to the criminal use of information and communication technologies (hereinafter – ICT. The purpose of the study is to analyze the dynamics of the indicators of Russian crime during the pandemic, to assess the adopted criminal-political decisions in terms of adequacy to the changes in crime, to develop on this basis the proposals for criminal law improvement able to increase the consistency of the current Criminal Code of the Russian Federation and its compliance with the requirements of the criminal-political situation in Russia. The assessment of the sectoral structure consistency in the regulation of criminal liability for committing crimes in the special conditions of a pandemic was used as the main research method. The research was carried out by the authors based on the dialectical method, which made it possible to manage changes in social reality by means of legal response, other scientific methods: sociological, modeling, concrete historical, comparative were applied as well. The results obtained showed that overcoming the negative changes in crime requires adjusting the vector of criminal policy from liberalization towards tightening in relation to crimes committed using ICT. It is proposed to expand the list of aggravating circumstances, limit the use of some mechanisms for terminating criminal liability associated with exemption from it, and review the possibilities of applying conditional conviction to persons who have committed crimes in a pandemic, up to and including refusal of this form of implementation of criminal liability. The formulated new proposals for improving the General Part of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation restore the consistency of the criminal law and increase the consistency of criminal-political decisions during a pandemic.