Supreme Court prepares amendments to limit arrests of women

Chairman of the Supreme Court Vyacheslav Lebedev discussed with Russian President Vladimir Putin the preparation of proposals for the humanization of criminal legislation. As follows from the transcript of the Kremlin press service, the meeting discussed the work of the Armed Forces on instructions given by the president after a meeting with members of the Human Rights Council (HRC). It proposed to analyze the practice of confinement in pre-trial detention centers of “persons accused of non-violent crimes, including those suffering from diseases, and women with young children”, and, if necessary, submit proposals for changing the legislation.

“We have prepared an appropriate bill aimed at humanizing the law enforcement practice in relation to women, in relation to persons who have committed crimes of small and medium gravity for the first time,” Lebedev said. – The ultimate goal of this bill is that a person, if he was brought for the first time for these offenses, would not be held criminally liable at all, so that there would first be administrative or other disciplinary responsibility. And only in the case of repeated commission of these actions can criminal liability arise.

The proposals of the chairman of the Supreme Court can only be welcomed, member of the Human Rights Council Eva Merkacheva said in an interview with Vedomosti. “We still have women in prison, including for crimes of medium gravity, but I assume that Vyacheslav Mikhailovich discussed other proposals of the Supreme Court behind the scenes, in particular, which were proposed by the HRC for recall,” says Merkacheva. According to her, the document dealt directly with limiting arrests against people who committed non-violent crimes, including women with children and people with serious illnesses.

First of all, the amendments prepared by the Supreme Court introduce into the Criminal Procedure Code a distinction between violent and non-violent crimes, that is, not related to the use of violence or the threat of violence.

Further, it is proposed to allow a preventive measure in the form of detention only for crimes of medium gravity of a violent nature, as well as for grave and especially grave crimes. Only in exceptional cases is it proposed to arrest in cases of crimes of medium gravity of a non-violent nature: when the accused does not have a place of residence or place of stay in Russia, when his identity has not been established, when a previously chosen measure of restraint has been violated, when the suspect has fled from the preliminary investigation or court.

For women with young children, arrest for a crime of medium gravity will be possible only if the crime is violent.

In addition, the SC proposes to ban the arrest of people with serious illnesses included in the list of impediments to detention. Previously, the law only prohibited extending the preventive measure for such people, but not electing them.

In total, in 2022, according to the Supreme Court, 55,196 petitions for the choice of a preventive measure in the form of detention in relation to those suspected and accused of non-violent crimes were satisfied in Russia, of which 2,593 persons (5%) were accused of crimes of minor gravity , 14,861 persons (27%) – in crimes of average gravity, and 37,742 persons (68%) – in grave and especially grave crimes. With regard to women with young children, suspected and accused of non-violent crimes, 1,379 requests for detention (2%) were granted, and another 224 requests for detention of persons in respect of whom a disability of I or II group was established (0.4 %) – of these categories of persons, 49 persons (3%) were accused of crimes of minor and medium gravity, 284 persons (18%) – of crimes of medium gravity, and 1,270 persons, or 79%, were accused of grave and especially grave crimes.

Thus, the proposed amendments to the norms of the Code of Criminal Procedure would allow every third person to avoid arrest, provided that his identity is established, and he himself did not try to hide from the investigation and court. However, the amendments will not affect women with young children and disabled people accused of non-violent serious crimes, including dozens of economic, official offenses and those related to possession of drugs.

In general, this is a mitigation of legislation and liability for certain categories of crimes, but such changes may have the opposite effect in terms of an increase in such violations, said Dmitry Gorbunov, partner at the law firm Rustam Kurmaev and Partners.

If we talk about the complete abolition of criminal liability for all those who have committed crimes of small and medium gravity for the first time, then it will affect hundreds of thousands of citizens, explained Vladislav Radov, head of criminal practice at Key Consulting Group. “According to the Supreme Court, in 2022, out of 578,751 convicted in total, more than 70% were prosecuted for crimes of minor and medium gravity. Given that most of them committed the relevant crimes for the first time, this initiative has a wide field for law enforcement,” Radov says. According to him, this will positively affect the state of registered crime, which will fall, and negatively – the actual protection of victims, which will be reduced to nothing for many crimes. “At the same time, such proposals will by no means affect persons who commit crimes against the state, which, in the light of the trend of recent years, are classified as grave and especially grave acts,” the lawyer specified. Such an initiative still causes serious controversy among specialists, while proposals to limit the practice of detention are long overdue, Radov stated.

In 2022, the workload on the courts has increased, and the share of satisfied applications for detention of the total number of those considered exceeds 90%, says lawyer Alexander Zabusov. According to him, in the previous two years, the proportion of satisfied applications was lower. “At the same time, cases of detention of persons suffering from diseases and women with young children are very rare,” the lawyer says. – Such cases are isolated, each of which is studied in detail by supervising prosecutors. If the fact of having young dependent children can be confirmed quickly enough, before the court session, then in the absence of medical documents in the form of conclusions, it is very difficult to confirm the presence of a diagnosed disease.