Human rights activists have developed a revolutionary bill: do not take into custody “non-violent” suspects

With rare exceptions, accused of fraud are offered to be placed under house arrest

A bill has been submitted to the State Duma that will prohibit the arrest of people for non-violent crimes. If it is accepted, Russian pre-trial detention centers will “breathe out” in the near future: the number of new prisoners will decrease.

The initiator of the bill, Ksenia Goryacheva, a deputy from the New People party (the author of these lines, a member of the Human Rights Council, helped her prepare the document), proposes to amend the Code of Criminal Procedure, namely, part 1.1 of Article 108. It states that detention as preventive measures cannot be applied, I quote “in relation to a person suspected or accused of committing crimes, if none of the crimes of which the person is suspected or accused of committing does not provide for the use of violence or the threat of its use.” True, with a reservation – crimes representing a special social danger. Among them are “fraud in the field of computer information”, “production, transportation and sale of counterfeit money”, “falsification of voting results”, “bribery of an arbitrator”, as well as some parts of “drug” articles (228 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, 228.1-229.1, 234 ) etc.

As follows from the explanatory note, the problems of overcrowding in the pre-trial detention center, excessive use by the courts of the measure of restraint in the form of detention, as well as the conditions of being in the pre-trial detention center were discussed at the level of the President of the Russian Federation. Let me remind you that at a meeting of the VVP with members of the Human Rights Council in December last year, the author of these lines spoke about the difficult situation with arrests (prisoners sleep in turns due to the overlimit, they are not provided with proper medical care, etc.). On January 12, a list of Vladimir Putin’s instructions was published following the meeting, where paragraph 17 ordered to analyze the practice of detention of persons accused of non-violent crimes, including persons suffering from diseases, and women with young children. And, if necessary, submit proposals for introducing amendments to the legislation of the Russian Federation aimed at humanizing justice.

The explanatory note cites figures: in 2021, the courts considered 99,298 petitions of investigators to place suspects (accused) in custody, of which 87,905 – 88.5% were satisfied. House arrest was chosen 6828 times (12.8 times less than detention), and bail – in 25 cases. The satisfaction rate for applications to extend the term of custody is 93.2% – 27,106 applications out of 29,069. According to the results of 6 months of 2022, the number of arrests increased by 2% compared to the same period last year and amounted to 44.3 thousand people.