Victimological Characteristics and Prevention of Crimes Committed by Women (Regional Aspect)

The authors discuss the victimization characteristics of crimes committed by women in Irkutsk and Transbaikal Regions, the characteristics of the personality of the victim of these infringements, the behavioral patterns of the criminal and the victim in the process of victimization, their relationships and social connections. The research, based on the statistical analysis and study of 250 criminal cases, allowed the authors to come to a number of conclusions, including the following ones. Victimization trends in the regions under consideration are unfavorable, the victimization level is growing, and the growth rate is higher in Irkutsk Region than in Transbaikal Region. The structure of regional victimization is dominated by crimes against property, while other types in this structure are crimes against life and health, family and minors, as well as against health of the population and public morals. Characteristic features of victims of regional female crimes are age victimity, as every second victim in Transbaikal Region and every third in Irkutsk Region has it, and a considerable victimogenic personality deformation of most middle-aged victims. Such victims show guilty (unlawful, amoral or light-minded) behavior, which is the manifestation of their personal victimity. Using the obtained results, the authors worked out a system of victimological prevention measures aimed at stopping and neutralizing the identified victimogenic factors. They suggest legal, organizational, information, educational measures, as well as measures of rehabilitation and procedural nature. Taking into account the regional specifics of victimization, the personality of crime victims, their victim-like behavior can make the practice of victimological prevention more effective.

Criminological Aspects of Sport Policy

Sport policy is a purposeful activity of various subjects connected with organizing and holding sports competitions. Such activity may be state-organized, administrative, financial, commercial, engineering and construction-related, military, security, professional, corporate, training, entertainment, relatively mass-scale, agent, referee, qualifying, and others. It should be taken into account that, besides officially recognized sports, there are also illegal competitions. Criminological aspects, connected with the possibility of crime, can be found everywhere. All of these leads to the necessity of establishing and developing sport criminology as a component of sport policy. Criminological aspects of sport policy are especially evident in the market conditions. Their analysis is necessary for the optimization of preventive work in the most important areas. The authors single out three such areas: criminal law prevention of crime in sports, enforcement of prevention policy for criminal and criminogenic sports, and counteracting sport extremism. The effectiveness of work in the first area is close to zero because special «sport» criminal law norms are not and will not be enforced. The analysis of the second area leads the authors to the conclusion that it is necessary to intensify the counteraction to criminal sports, primarily, dog fighting and street racing. As for the criminogenic sports, they can be conditionally broken into two categories: those promoting violence and cruelty, and those equipping athletes with the skills interesting for the criminal community (organized criminal groups). The first category includes MMA-type female fights. This disgusting spectacle, broadcast on TV, is absolutely contrary both to the female nature and to the traditional values of peoples of Russia. Such fights should be prohibited in the Russian Federation. The third area requires monitoring to prevent fans’ movements from turning into extremist organizations. The promotion of patriotic feelings among fans should be recognized as a strategic direction in the prevention of sport extremism.

Promotion of Justice as an Independent Criminal Procedure Function

The article proves the necessity of involving the persons assisting the parties and the Court into criminal proceedings. The author analyzes the promotion of justice as an independent criminal procedure function under Chapter 8 of the Criminal Procedure Code of the Russian Federation, which is carried out by both the participants of criminal proceedings and by other subjects of criminal law relations who do not have an independent procedural status. The conducted social and legal analysis made it possible to state that the development of the idea of the rule of law requires individuals to obtain a correct understanding of the organization of the modern society, its development trends, and the necessity of acquiring due legal awareness. The understanding of legal awareness varied throughout the history of our state but what remained unchanged were the ideas that it can be influenced and that it determines the development of law and the law enforcement itself. Citizens with the due level of legal awareness are ready to promote justice, which testifies to their high level of social development, a desire to be involved in law enforcement work, to bring justice and ensure legality of procedural decisions. The author shows that criminal proceedings in Russia require facilitation, but the majority of people are not ready to provide it for a number of reasons, which proves the need for a detailed analysis of promoting justice in the modern Russian criminal process. The conducted research stresses the theoretical and practical inadequacy of the three-part system of criminal procedure functions enshrined in the current Russian criminal procedure legislation. The author examines the possibility of singling out the promotion of justice as an independent criminal procedure institute necessary for making lawful, well-grounded and comprehensive procedural decisions by officials and state bodies. The author concludes that it is necessary to introduce changes in the Criminal Procedure Code of the Russian Federations which will foresee the possibility of renaming Chapter 8 of the Code. Besides, having analyzed the concept of «justice», the author presents his position of what should be understood as the promotion of justice.

A Comparative Analysis of the Social Well-Being of a Person in the Conditions of Freedom and Isolation

The authors examine a complex of methods for identifying the emotional-evaluative attitude of individuals to the social reality and their place in it in the conditions of freedom and isolation. Using the research results and the analysis of practical experience, they describe psychological-pedagogical means and methods that improve the reserve resources of the human body, which leads to positive changes in forming a favorable social well-being and correction of inmates in the conditions of isolation. Special attention is paid to the interactions of employees of the departments of social educational work and psychological labs with inmates in correctional institutions. The authors single out the following methods leading to favorable results in the work of the abovementioned departments: individual and group discussions, doll therapy, use of metaphor (association) cards, psychocorrection, Rokic’s methodology, constitutive method in the form of testing for suicidal tendencies. An important component in the work with the suspects, the accused, and the convicted persons is changing their moral orientations, development of a law-abiding mindset and orientation towards correction (rehabilitation). Criminals can be broken into three groups. The first group is comprised of those who can be successfully rehabilitated, it includes persons with views and convictions which agree with the norms of social community who committed crimes though negligence. The second group includes those who can be rehabilitated, these are individuals with essentially unstable views and convictions. The third group is made up of inmates whose rehabilitation is hardly possible. In this case, the main task of the social education worker consists in using the positive qualities of the convict’s personality to provoke a conflict between the positive and the negative, and the task of the psychologists is to provide psychological support for the person.

Problems of Protecting Virtual Game Property by Means of Criminal Law

The legal regulation of social relations in virtual reality is attracting an increasing attention of scholars. There are corresponding Russian and foreign publications concerning different branches of law: civil, tax, labor, international humanitarian, and criminology. Criminological research is based, among other things, on the analysis of sociocultural factors: how online gaming behavior influences the «cultural normalization» of similar behavior in the real world, the problems and boundaries of permitted violence. At the same time, the problem of infringements on virtual game property is becoming more urgent. The first reason for this is the fact that the possession of virtual property can have legal and economic consequences in the real world. The second reason is connected with the absence, in most jurisdictions, of the legal regulation of the emerging property rights (or other «rights in rem») to game property, which hinders prosecution for crimes against it, or makes it impossible in some countries where criminal law protection is linked to positive legislation. The authors believe that it is best to view these crimes as offences against property, and not cybercrimes in the narrow sense of the word. It is obvious that the problems of defining the crime of theft in the virtual space are connected with the understanding of the object and other features of theft, and the analysis thus mainly focuses on comparing the legal nature of virtual game property with how it corresponds to the features of theft in the current legislation. Key concepts of the legal nature of virtual game property are formulated, which are then analyzed from the standpoint of their applicability in criminal law. According to the authors, there are two main ways to solve the problem of virtual game property protection: either, following the approaches found in foreign practice, the definition of theft should be broadened, or the legal protection regime sui generis should be created to deal with the protection of all cyber aspects of property relations.

Main Trends in the Development of Criminological Theory and Crime Prevention Practice in the Context of the Digitalization of Society

The digitalization of society, associated with a large-scale introduction of digital technologies in all socially relevant spheres, not only brough about positive changes, but also had a powerful effect on the transformation of crime and criminogenic factors. This has created an urgent need for understanding the prospects of criminological science in the new conditions, for strengthening its role in ensuring national security, for improving its methodology in new ways. The authors define key criminal threats to the security of the digital space: a rapid increase of its criminalization due to the features attractive for criminals (trans-national character of cyberspace, widespread anonymization and encryption, digital means of committing crimes and concealing their traces, etc.); the emergence and widening of criminogenic zones of cyberspace, with DarkNet holding a special place; the use of «digital» methods of resisting law enforcement, including cryptocurrencies and artificial intelligence. It is concluded that the abovementioned circumstances make it necessary to change the methodology of criminological research and the practice of law enforcement. The collection and generalization of information from publicly available digital sources, its analysis with the use of big data acquire a special research potential connected with the possibility of finding hidden regularities and obtaining criminological knowledge that cannot be found elsewhere. The digitalization of society creates conditions for the introduction of a preventive model of law enforcement based on predictive analysis methods. It becomes possible to quickly detect signs of criminal activity that require both a specific reaction of law enforcement and systemic managerial decisions. It also opens broad prospects for predicting individual criminal behavior by analyzing the Internet activity of specific individuals. The authors then highlight the most relevant directions for the development of criminological theory and the practice of crime prevention in the conditions of the digitalization of society.

The Development of the Norms and Institutions of Criminal Law in the Transcaucasia Region at the Beginning of the 19th Century

The authors study the development of criminal law in the Transcaucasia region of the Russian Empire in the early 19th century, and discuss the political and legal significance of the accession of Transcaucasia to the Russian Empire. The normative basis of the research is various agreements of the Russian Empire, including agreements with the Khanates of Northern Azerbaijan, the acts of the supreme power —decrees, manifests and instructions, as well as the corresponding narrative materials. The methodological basis of this research is the general dialectic method of scientific cognition, the methods of empirical and theoretical character: description, formalization, comparison, analysis, generalization, deduction and induction, hypothesis, as well as the special legal methods: formal legal, comparative legal. Research results made it possible to prove that, before Transcaucasia joined the Russian Empire, social relationships in the region, including criminal law ones, were regulated by both written and common law, and that state and political changes lead to changes in criminal legislation throughout the whole history. When Transcaucasia, which has a multi-national and multi-confessional population, joined the Russian Empire, the central government faced the task of working out a special criminal law policy of protecting the society from criminal infringements, as well as some other goals and tasks in this area. The authors determine the degree to which the borderland policy of the state influenced the development of the borderland criminal policy, describe legal acts that enacted changes in the criminal legislation. Special attention is paid to describing the institutions of criminal law that underwent changes though the participation of the state in this process; specifics of the goals and tasks of government coercion, as well as the general basics of sentencing are evaluated. The conducted analysis of the contents of historical legal acts allowed the authors to conclude that, after joining the Russian Empire, the essential tasks of the criminal law of Transcaucasia were, for the first time, formulated at the normative level, including such tasks as crime prevention and the protection of individuals and public safety from criminal infringements. The fundamental principles of humanism and justice, different from the previously dominant ones, were established in the criminal law.

Anti-Corruption Criminological Security as a New Direction of Research

The sustainability of existence and the high destructive potential of corruption determined its place among the global problems that the humanity faces. One of the unique characteristics of corruption is its ability to adapt to the changing factors of the external environment, including the preventive measures. At the same time, continuous reproduction and development of various forms of corruption predetermines the necessity for improving ways of preventing it. Delays or insufficient effectiveness of counteracting publicly dangerous forms of corruption may jeopardize the system-forming elements of the society and the state, may result in their destruction. The complex nature of the phenomenon of corruption requires a search for new fundamental approaches in counteracting it. From the standpoint of history, the Russian Federation developed the legal and organizational basis of counteracting corruption in the shortest time possible. At the same time, the analysis of how this system functions makes it possible to conclude that it is at the limit of its possible extension. The existing situation is partially explained by the fact that, in view of the urgency of problems to be solved, the practice of building the state model of corruption counteraction was always ahead of scientific findings, which led to inevitable intrasystem contradictions. To reach a whole new level in the development of anti-corruption work, it is necessary to find fundamentally new approaches which would make it possible to unite a substantial body of available interdisciplinary knowledge within one guiding idea and present an optimal theoretical model. Modern Russian research is actively studying specific features of corruption and corruption crimes as well as ways of preventing them. At the same time, there have not yet been any fundamental research of the criminological aspects of anti-corruption activities from the standpoint of ensuring national security. One of the prospective directions of such research is the development of the theoretical basis of anti-corruption security as an inter-branch direction of research. Taking into account that crimes of corruption inflict the greatest damage on public relations, it should be noted that the research of anti-corruption criminological security has a considerable scientific potential. Primary cognition of poly-aspect manifestations of anti-corruption criminological security as well as its systemic-structural characteristics will allow to estimate the prospects of the presented direction of research.

German Experience of Terminating Criminal Prosecution with the Imposition of Duties and Regulations on the Accused in the Context of the Russian Draft Law on Criminal Offence

The second attempt of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation to introduce the concept of a criminal offence into Russian criminal and criminal procedure legislation widens the non-rehabilitating grounds for the termination of a criminal case or prosecution with the imposition of other criminal law measures: it is suggested that, in addition to a court fine, community work and partially paid work should also be introduced. This leads to certain problems, including problems with the presumption of innocence and the observance of the principle of justice. The authors turn to the German experience for a better understanding of the situation. Germany faced similar problems much earlier, when § 153а was introduced in the Criminal Procedure Code of the Federal Republic of Germany (CPC of the FRG); it provided for an opportunity to terminate criminal prosecution for criminal offences on the grounds of expediency with the imposition of duties and regulations on the accused, which are akin to criminal law measures under draft law № 1112019-7. Taking into consideration the theoretical approaches developed in Germany, the practice of the Constitutional Court of the FRG and the Supreme Court of the FRG, the authors examine the goals of introducing § 153а in the CPC of the FRG, the practice of its implementation, as well as the problem of terminating criminal prosecution on the grounds of expediency with the imposition of duties and regulations on the accused connected with the observance of the Constitution of the FRG, the presumption of innocence, the principles of justice, certainty, equality before law; they analyze the controversial legal nature of duties and regulations under § 153а in the CPC of the FRG. According to German criminal procedure law, the termination of criminal prosecution on the grounds of expediency with the imposition of duties and regulations on the accused is a right, and not a duty of the corresponding officers and agencies as it is, in fact, an alternative to criminal prosecution which makes it possible to terminate it at a certain stage when there are all the necessary legal grounds for criminal prosecution.

A Stochastic Model of the Repressive-Preventive Impact on Crime: from Intuition to Calculations

The authors analyze the use of new digital technologies for automated collection, analysis and assessment of large volumes of data on crime, its key factors and the effects of crime countraction efforts with the goal of a gradual transition from the intuitive method of crime counteraction to the calculations-based one. The hypothesis of the study is that a continuous multi-source monitoring of quantitative crime indices, factors and the effects of crime counteraction efforts will make it possible not only to optimize budgetary expenditure on fighting crime, but also to find effective solutions for other practical problems of crime counteraction efforts (specifically, problems of evaluating and compensating the inflicted damage, problems of reducing the number of ungrounded changes in criminal, criminal procedure and penitentiary legislation). A specific modern feature of the state policy of combating crime is that digital technologies make it possible to develop and implement a stochastic model of repressive-preventive impact on crime with the use of criminal law, criminal procedure and penitentiary measures. It is suggested that the use of the stochastic model of repressive-preventive impact on crime should be viewed as a necessary condition for the development and adoption of national and regional programs of crime counteraction financed by the federal and regional budgets. The authors believe that the introduction of the stochastic model of the repressive-preventive impact in the practice of crime counteraction should be conducted in several stages. At the first stage, the federal law and the Act of the RF Government shoud determine the conditions of a mid-term experiment on the territories of some subjects of the Russian Federation, which will ensure a continuous monitoring, including the collection, processing and analysis of statistical data, results of population and experts’ surveys on the condition and dynamics of grave and especially grave crime, its factors and the effects of state efforts to counteract such crimes. At the final stage of the introduction of a stochastic model of the repressive-preventive impact on crime in the practice of state governance, the authors suggest creating an automated federal system of multi-source monitoring of indexed crimes (these are the crimes most «sensitive» for achieving the goals of national security and ensuring public order, which require non-stop monitoring), their key factors and the results of counteracting them. Key expected results from the introduction of this stochastic model and a continuous mlti-source monitoring into the practice of crime counteraction should be the optimization of budgetary expenses on criminal prosecution, the reduction of the number of inmates, the reduction of the number of changes introduced into the Criminal, Criminal Procedure and Penitentiary Codes of the Russian Federation.