Realization of the Rights of Convicts in the Russian Constitutional-Legal Model of Free Elections

Abstract

The author studies retrospective and modern categories of admissible limitations of the constitutional right of a person to elect others and to be elected for appointment into bodies of public authority and public offices if they have committed grave or very grave crimes. The author also gives a contemporary assessment of the normative introduction of such limitations in the election field taking into account the legal positions in international and Russian court practice. It is argued that the current Russian constitutional-legal model of free elections has an undifferentiated limitation of active suffrage for persons sentenced to a criminal punishment with a limitation of freedom. The author analyzes the court practice regarding the lawfulness and adequacy of undifferentiating limitation of suffrage rights of convicts, specifically, the legal position of the European Court of Human Rights and the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation. It is shown that some regimes of incarceration should be transferred into alternative types of punishment that do not entail the limitations of active suffrage. It is stated that there could be more stringent limitation for the realization of passive suffrage than for realization of the constitutional right to elect representatives into bodies of public authority and public offices, especially in cases of grave and very grave crimes. The author concludes that the limitations imposed by the federal legislation regarding the constitutional right to suffrage for persons guilty of grave or very grave crimes is admissible, no matter if the criminal punishment for such publically dangerous and illegal actions is conditional or it is an actual imprisonment in a penitentiary institution.