In our country under the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, punishment of minors is possible only subject to a number of strict restrictions. The most serious misconduct is punishable by imprisonment. Nothing more severe can be applied to the guilty. There are a number of provisions in the Criminal Code that strictly declare when it is possible to resort to the most difficult variant of punishment for the committed. This list is pretty narrow. This approach is due to the public's desire to protect childhood and the right to grow up in adequate conditions.
Features of the situation
In accordance with the decision of the highest judicial plenum, the sentencing of a minor at the present time in the form of a temporary restriction of freedom is possible only if the citizen has reached the age of sixteen (or already older than this border). The maximum severity of the restrictions is a six-year sentence. If a person is guilty of a particularly serious offense, he can be detained for a longer term, but not more than one decade.
The imposition of punishment on minors is fraught with a number of restrictions. In particular, it is unacceptable to imprison a citizen who has not yet reached the age of sixteen and has committed an offense for the first time. This applies to violations of generally accepted legal standards of medium severity or small. If an individual’s guilt for a grave, especially grave violation of the laws is proved in court, the minimum sentence is halved. All the features of this situation are clearly explained in the articles of the special part of the current collection of legal norms - the Criminal Code.
All attention to aspects
The specifics of assigning criminal punishment to minors, prescribed in regulatory legal acts, are closely related to the specifics of a particular case. For example, if a certain citizen, whose guilt in the court of justice was obviously proved, is currently a minor and conditionally convicted, he may again violate the public order established by the public during the trial period. In such a situation, the court first assesses the gravity of the perfect. When classifying him in all categories, except for the especially grave, you can re-appoint a suspended sentence.
If the situation is this way, the assignment of criminal punishment to minors is accompanied by an update of the trial period. To enhance the effect of punishment, the state institution responsible for law and order can impose a number of obligations on the repeat offender, which will have to be fulfilled - excuses are simply impossible.
Many or few?
In accordance with the decision of the Supreme Administrative Court on sentencing minors, the current normative rules limit the total duration of the sentence. Deprivation of liberty of a delinquent citizen is possible only for a decade. This also applies to a situation where a person has committed several crimes, for each of which an appropriate punishment has been chosen for him by the court. It is necessary to take into account the restriction when imposing each subsequent restriction of freedom.
Particular attention was paid to the issue under consideration almost two decades ago, when in 2000 the Supreme Arbitration Court issued the seventh decree on the norms of the Criminal Code, the sentencing of minors.It was then that the attention of all lawyers, jurists, judges of our state was attracted to the need to select a type of punishment that is not associated with a restriction on the freedom of the guilty individual.
Relevance of the issue
In accordance with the decree of the plenum, juvenile punishment should be chosen as soft as possible. It is possible to deprive a guilty citizen of freedom only when the court has sufficient information about the person’s personality, and in addition, the circumstances of the case stimulate the adoption of such a decision. If a judge can reasonably prove the position according to which other punishments, except imprisonment, are ineffective, then you can resort to this measure.
The SAC decided that the procedure for imposing sentences on minors involves first a thorough study of the living and living conditions of an individual who has appeared before the court as an accused person. It should be considered whether such adults are present in the environment of a minor whose influence adversely affects the child and his behavior. If it was possible to find other circumstances affecting the personality of a person, his understanding of responsibility for what was done, it is necessary to take all of them into account when choosing a specific punishment.
Limits and Limitations
According to the norms of the Criminal Code and the official opinion of the plenum, the sentencing of a minor in the case when the misconduct is assessed as grave, especially grave, should be selected taking into account the minimum time. The easiest way to explain this is with examples. So, if one citizen of our country killed another, normally the punishment for such an offense will be imprisonment for a term of six years or more. If the offender has not reached the age of majority, for him the minimum limit of freedom restriction is a three-year term.
If a crime committed by a minor citizen is rated as low in severity or average, the minimum period for which freedom may be restricted is a two-month time period. For this period, the guilty individual will be placed in an educational colony, where he will have to spend the required time in conditions of limited mobility and other freedoms.
Features of regulations
You can find out what is taken into account when sentencing a minor, if you carefully examine the regulations adopted specifically for cases whose subjects such citizens of the state became. These are two articles of the Criminal Code, published under the numbers 88, 89. The circumstances of the illegal act are largely devoted to the second, while the first focuses on possible restrictions on the choice of duration, severity of punishment in relation to the person whose fault has been proved.
If you carefully study the first part of article 89, you can find out the following: when considering a case in a court, it takes into account (when sentencing a minor) the peculiarities of how this person lives, in what conditions, environment he lives, what kind of education he receives. The judge must evaluate the level of mental development and all the specific aspects of the personality. It is important to understand whether there is an influence on the part of the elders, how strong and what is its specificity.
There are disagreements
In many ways, the problems of sentencing juveniles are due to the difficulty of correctly assessing the circumstances in which the defendant lived and developed. For example, if the person who committed the offense was forced to live in poor conditions, this may be an incentive for the judge to both ease the punishment and make it stronger. But living in good conditions is clearly not regarded as an incentive to increase punishment.
Similar discrepancies are observed when assessing other circumstances when sentencing minors.For example, influences from senior comrades distinguish between positive and negative. Whether to mitigate or toughen the punishment, in each specific situation, the judge must decide, carefully analyzing the features of the particular case, since there is no single formula that applies to all offenders. In the general case, it is believed that less severe penalties should be applied if a person is in the zone of influence of elders. Also indulgent deserve persons who suffered from violent acts on the part of the guardian, deprived of care, attention, parenting.
Additional terms
The specifics of sentencing juveniles are also related to the psyche of a particular defendant. If a person is lagging behind in development in this aspect with respect to the generally accepted normal level, while there are no disorders, diseases, pathologies, it is likely that he will be recognized as not subject to punishment under the Criminal Code. You can read more about this in the latest edition of the third part of article 20. The legislation adheres to the following logic: the presence of a developmental delay is an incentive to reduce responsibility and facilitate measures to punish the offender.
In the opposite direction, the specified condition does not work. Currently, the specifics of sentencing juveniles are such that the absence of mental deviations, lags is not a reason to increase the sentence. Equally, it is impossible to punish more strongly than others, if it is revealed that they are ahead of their peers in mental development.
General conclusion
Within our country, the assignment of punishment to minors involves taking into account all factors, circumstances that led to specific acts on the part of the defendant. Identified features of the situation can be used by the court as an occasion to reduce punishment and reduce liability, but their use in the opposite direction is unacceptable.
At the same time, this feature of juvenile sentencing is obvious only with careful study of the wording of the law, but there is no direct indication of it. Some jurists call for adjusting the current Criminal Code in order to specify a similar standard directly. This will help to get away from some discrepancies, disagreements encountered in judicial practice today.
I do not understand!
The sentencing of minors in accordance with the current standards of legal acts requires taking into account “other features” with respect to a particular defendant. A certain circle of lawyers agrees that such a formulation is unacceptably unclear, unclear, and its interpretation is possible at the discretion of a specific person conducting the case, in favor of the offender or against him. On the one hand, the phrase was introduced into the law to determine the exact position of a particular individual relative to the public, generally accepted values. The judge must evaluate how prepared the person is to adapt in society, whether he is able to learn to behave constructively in a conflict situation, difficult, and also to withstand the negative external effects of constantly surrounding people.
At the same time, “other circumstances” in sentencing minors can be regarded as child motivation. With a careful study of the case, the judge can find evidence that the act was committed out of mischief or the desire to own a prestigious item that will allow self-affirmation among peers. To understand what exactly takes place in a particular case, it is important to investigate age-related mental characteristics. The task of the law enforcement instance is to assess to what extent the defendant is inclined to imitate, fantasize, impulsively act and succumb to extraneous suggestion even before the sentencing. In total, this information will help to choose the most effective punishment.
It is important
If we evaluate the circumstances described above, we can see that some of them are applicable not only to minors, but also to the older contingent, but the second type of circumstances, that is, mischief and so on, are features that are characteristic of a strictly teenage environment. This is reflected in the current legislation, where these features are registered for accounting only in relation to juvenile defendants.
At the same time, the identity of the culprit is an important part of the case, which must be taken into account regardless of how old the person who appeared before the justice is how old. The law took measures to prevent double counting of information with the aim of weakening, strengthening the punishment. However, many jurists believe that the formulations present at present are still not sufficiently obvious and readable, therefore, it is necessary to prescribe clear age boundaries and features inherent in this age, and not just mention “other features” in general terms.
He is small!
The current norms of the Criminal Code require that minor age be taken into account as a circumstance on the basis of which the sentence should be milder than, ceteris paribus, the conviction of an adult citizen. At the same time, this factor in itself does not play such a significant role as in combination with other circumstances that make punishment weaker. Specialized features that would be based only on the defendants not reaching the age of 18 do not currently exist, at least in the laws of our state.
When sentencing a juvenile, circumstances aggravating the punishment should also be analyzed taking into account the fact that the person who turned out to be in charge of the judicial law enforcement agency has not yet reached the age of 18 years. The fact of the number of years alone cannot be a reason to strengthen the chosen option of responsibility, but it can play a role in the presence of other significant aspects.
How was it before?
Before the introduction of new standards, the Criminal Code adopted in 1960 was in effect in our country. In it, as well as in specialized legal literature, more than once the emphasis was placed on the specifics of the attitude to the situation in which a minor citizen appears before the court. At the same time, the general standards were much more stringent than at present. For example, when examining a case for which the death penalty would normally be the punishment, imprisonment for a decade or more, when the legal authority proved the guilt of the minor, it is unacceptable to refer to his personality characteristics in order to mitigate the sentence. This was explained by the fact that when lawyers formulated laws, the fact of the possibility of committing a crime by a minor was already assessed, and additional mitigation of punishment would become a double consideration, which is completely unacceptable. Currently, the legislative system calls for paying attention to the minor age, regarding it in some cases as a reason to mitigate the measure chosen for application.
Is it all monotonous?
If you pay attention to the relevant article 88, you can see that the subject considered in it is a certain type of offender who has not reached the age of majority. These include those who are barely 14 years old and those who are almost 18 years old. Lawyers draw attention to the fact that there is no single juvenile delinquent, it is important to approach in each case, taking into account personal, age characteristics, and these approaches should be standardized and entered into laws. Until this is done, there will be disagreements, discrepancies in the assessment of legal, legal standards.
By the way, from judicial practice there are many cases where the punishment was commuted due to the fact that the person whose guilt was proved, barely crossed the 14-year age threshold. 14-18 years old is a rather big difference in age, a period that (according to psychologists) is an important stage in the formation of personality. Over these four years, a person develops actively, quickly, gradually realizing the characteristics of the society of which he turned out to be a part. Of course, there are certain features that are characteristic of all minors, but a conviction on the issue makes it necessary to pay attention to the specific specifics of the age of the person who is facing the court.
Important aspect
Legislation adopted at present considers minority at the time of the commission of an unlawful act to be a circumstance that encourages a softer sentence in proving a citizen’s guilt. This is the general beginning of the established practice of the courts. This applies equally to those who committed misconduct as a minor, and appeared before justice at a later age. At the same time, the provisions declared by the fourteenth article of the Criminal Code do not apply to those persons who, at the time of sentencing, have crossed the eighteen-year mark. An exception is an article published under number 96.
When choosing a punishment for a minor, you should focus on the article published under number 88. The first part of this document contains a list of those methods that are not applicable to persons under the age of 18. The inadmissibility of a number of types of imposition of liability is obvious even without additional reasons. Much has been agreed upon when describing a specific type of punishment in an article devoted to this issue.