Abstract
The consequence of the pandemic caused by COVID-19 was the introduction of social restrictions, which led to an increase in the number of users of social networks, as well as their activity on the Internet. The involvement of citizens in the digital environment has changed the targets of criminal efforts of the criminals. The public’s fear of the coronavirus was subjected to criminal exploitation, new forms and methods of theft appeared, as a result, the spectrum of crime shifted to the criminal use of information and communication technologies (hereinafter – ICT. The purpose of the study is to analyze the dynamics of the indicators of Russian crime during the pandemic, to assess the adopted criminal-political decisions in terms of adequacy to the changes in crime, to develop on this basis the proposals for criminal law improvement able to increase the consistency of the current Criminal Code of the Russian Federation and its compliance with the requirements of the criminal-political situation in Russia. The assessment of the sectoral structure consistency in the regulation of criminal liability for committing crimes in the special conditions of a pandemic was used as the main research method. The research was carried out by the authors based on the dialectical method, which made it possible to manage changes in social reality by means of legal response, other scientific methods: sociological, modeling, concrete historical, comparative were applied as well. The results obtained showed that overcoming the negative changes in crime requires adjusting the vector of criminal policy from liberalization towards tightening in relation to crimes committed using ICT. It is proposed to expand the list of aggravating circumstances, limit the use of some mechanisms for terminating criminal liability associated with exemption from it, and review the possibilities of applying conditional conviction to persons who have committed crimes in a pandemic, up to and including refusal of this form of implementation of criminal liability. The formulated new proposals for improving the General Part of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation restore the consistency of the criminal law and increase the consistency of criminal-political decisions during a pandemic.
Highlights
The spread of COVID-19, which caused the pandemic, has entailed significant changes in the social and economic conditions of Russian society
The objectives of the study are: a) to track the change in the indicators of Russian crime during the COVID-19 pandemic; b) to evaluate the criminal-political decisions adopted in the country from the standpoint of adequacy to the changes in crime, c) to develop proposals for amending and supplementing the criminal law that can increase the consistency of the current Criminal Code of the Russian Federation and its compliance with the requirements of the criminal-political situation in Russia
In the context of legal restrictions caused by the need to overcome the pandemic, the vector of Russia's criminal policy should be adjusted from liberalization to tightening
Summary
The spread of COVID-19, which caused the pandemic, has entailed significant changes in the social and economic conditions of Russian society. As a result of the introduction of restrictive measures aimed at curbing the further deterioration of the sanitary and epidemiological situation, a significant number of citizens changed their way of life. The growth in the number of criminal acts using IT technologies committed during nine months of 2020 increased by 77% compared to the same period of the previous year. Four of these crimes out of five (81.5%) were committed by theft or fraud, and their increase amounted to 83.5% compared to 2019. The consequences of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the crime rate are being studied increasingly all over the world.
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