Judicial fine as a means of ensuring sustainable state development

Abstract

The article states that sustainable development of the state requires a balanced policy, including criminalisation, decriminalisation of acts, penalisation, depenalisation as well as prosecution, non-criminalisation. That is why the authors targeted one of the types of exemption from criminal liability, the imposition of a court fine, which is relatively new and causes certain difficulties in its application in practise. The purpose of the study is to identify controversial provisions of the criminal law in relation to the regulation of court fines and, on the basis of this, to develop recommendations aimed at eliminating the identified deficiencies of the legislation. The work is based on such methods as system analysis, formal-legal, comparative-legal, statistical and concrete-sociological. Having examined in detail the conditions of exemption from criminal liability in connection with the imposition of a court fine, the authors draw attention to the fact that a number of points require specification, including the terms of payment of a court fine, the definition of its lower limit, etc. They also express their disagreement with the position of the Supreme Court which allows a broad interpretation of the law. Therefore, courts must find out the reasons for nonpayment of the court fines before cancelling the fine and bringing a person to criminal responsibility. On the whole, assessing positively the introduction of a rule allowing for exemption from criminal liability in connection with the imposition of a court fine, they conclude that only a deliberate use of this type of exemption from criminal liability will contribute to the sustainable development of the Russian state, which requires adjustment of the criminal law in terms of regulation of the court fine, as well as some positions of the Russian Supreme Court.