Criminal punishment: humanism and security as vectors of development

¹ Department of Criminal Law Disciplines, Rostov branch of the Russian Customs Academy, Rostov-on-Don, Russia
² Department of Criminal Law and Procedure, Institute of Law, Togliatti State University, Togliatti, Russia

^* Corresponding author: 919820@mail.ru

Abstract

The paper analyzes the changes in the criminal legislation that have passed since its adoption with an emphasis on those that were justified by the idea of humanization. The attention is drawn to the fact that, despite the fact that the criminal policy liberalization has been actively discussed in different years, in modern Russia criminalization processes dominate decriminalization processes, and the number of articles in the Special Part of the Criminal Code has increased by 1.5 times. Against this background, the authors emphasize that judicial practice has gone away from the use of punishment as the only possible and effective means of responding to infringing behavior. In general, while advocating the economy of criminal repression, as well as the wider use of other measures of the criminal law against the perpetrators of crimes, the authors nevertheless express concern that the law enforcement officer is overly humanistic towards the perpetrators of serious and especially serious crimes, widely using suspended sentences, as well as imposing a sentence that corresponds to a milder category of crimes. In conclusion, the opinion is expressed that the modern legislator needs to focus his efforts on creating a full-fledged system of criminal legal measures with a clear understanding that each of them individually, and the whole system as a whole, should effectively protect the interests of the individual, society and the state.