Evolution of the Russian Judicial System in 2014

Abstract

After the mass protests that took place in 2011–12 and the annexation of Crimea in 2014, all of the negative tendencies that have existed in Russia's judicial system became more prominent, while the few positive tendencies have largely disappeared. Acquittal has become even rarer than it already was, even as the courts' tendency to hand down sentences short of incarceration has been reversed.

Keywords::

• Judicial system
• incarceration
• Russia
• courts

Notes

English translation © 2015 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC, from the Russian text © 2015 “Kontrapunkt.” “Evoliutsiia rossiiskoi sudebnoi sistemy v 2014 gody,” Kontrapunkt, 2015, no. 1, pp. 1–15. Translated by Stephen D. Shenfield. Ella Paneiakh is an assistant professor in the sociology department at the Higher School of Economics in St. Petersburg.

^1. For convicted people who are employed, for whom this form of punishment is usually set, it amounts to a deduction from wages—that is, a fine stretched out over time.

^2. I refer here to the “general” law enforcement activity of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Federal Drug Control Service, and the Investigative Committee. Political surveillance, use of the system for monitoring telephone and Internet communications, and the work of special services such as the Federal Security Service find no reflection in official judicial statistics.

^3. Such decisions are state secrets and are issued only by judges with special access.

^4. I thank Irina Chetverikova and Anastasia Skripkina for their help in processing statistics of judicial outcomes.

^5. Form 1. “Report of the Work of Courts of General Jurisdiction in Hearing Criminal Cases”; Form 10.3 “Report of Forms of Punishment for the Gravest Crime (Not Taking into Account Combined Punishments).”

^6. “Mesto AS SZO v sudebnoi sisteme.” Arbitrazhnyi sud Severo-Zapadnogo okruga (http://fasszo.arbitr.ru/welcome/showall/633200008, accessed August 21, 2015).

^7. V. Zhukov, “Naznacheniia, naprasnye nadezhdy i otstavki-2014,” Pravo.Ru, December 31, 2014 (http://pravo.ru/review/view/114204, accessed August 21, 2015).

^8. As of July 2015 the draft law “On Changes to the Criminal Procedure Code of the Russian Federation (Concerning Introduction of a Special Procedure for Pretrial Proceedings)” is still in the process of being prepared for submission to the State Duma (http://regulation.gov.ru/project/22294.html?point = view_project&stage = 1&stage_id = 7502, accessed August 21, 2015).

^9. For example, “Igornoe delo: kak u kazino s”ela prokurorskaia krysha,” RBK, August 15, 2011 (http://top.rbc.ru/story/610618.shtml, accessed August 21, 2015). This case concerned a network of underground casinos in Moscow oblast that enjoyed the protection of highly placed procuracy officials. The case was initiated in 2011 by the IC and in effect suppressed by the General Procuracy.

^10. In 2014 cases of private prosecution numbered 79,351 and constituted 8.2 percent of all criminal cases heard by the courts but accounted for 79.6 percent of all acquittals. The sentences imposed in such cases are also usually much milder and hardly ever entail incarceration (not a single instance in 2014). On the differences in outcome and procedure between court hearings of cases with and without the participation of a state prosecutor, see E. Paneiakh, “Prakticheskaia logika priniatiia sudebnykh reshenii: diskretsiia pod davleniem i kompromissy za schet podsudimogo,” in Kak sud'i prinimaiut resheniia: empiricheskie issledovaniia prava, ed. V. Volkov (Moscow: Statut, 2002), pp. 107–27. Here it should also be noted that some of the cases of private prosecution also reach the courts through the system of criminal justice (law enforcement officials are not obliged to initiate cases under these articles but have the right to do so). However, it is impossible to exclude from the detailed statistics of the Judicial Department only those cases of private prosecution that are initiated by citizens. As M. Pozdniakov has shown (unpublished manuscript, 2012), the statistics of cases of crimes subject to private prosecution that reach the courts through the law enforcement bodies do not differ substantially from the statistics of cases of comparable crimes involving public or private–public prosecution; thus, their exclusion from consideration should not significantly influence the conclusions drawn.

^11. Resolution of the State Duma No. 3500-6 GD of December 18, 2013, “On Declaration of an Amnesty in Connection with the Twentieth Anniversary of the Adoption of the Constitution of the Russian Federation,” Rossiiskaia gazeta, December 19, 2013 (http://www.rg.ru/2013/12/18/amnistia-dok.html, accessed August 21, 2015).

^12. The difference between these two situations is purely formal: in the first the court does not conduct the hearing of the case to the end, whereas in the second it completes the hearing and issues a verdict setting a specific punishment but releases the convicted person from this punishment.

^13. Here, of course, no account is taken of already convicted persons released by court decision in accordance with an amnesty. The figures refer only to accused persons amnestied during the judicial investigation. In other words, these are people who would have been convicted or acquitted or had their cases terminated in light of other circumstances in 2014 if no amnesty had taken place.

^14. M. Shkliaruk, Traektoriia ugolovnogo dela v ofitsial'noi statistike: na primere obobshchennykh dannykh pravookhranitel'nykh organov (St. Petersburg: IPP EUSPb, 2014).

^15. Soldatov, A. (2015). English translation © 2015 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC, from the Russian text © 2015 “Kontrapunkt.” “Ukroshchenie interneta,” Kontrapunkt, 2015, no. 1, pp. 1–11.

^16. Unlike other figures cited, these also include cases of private prosecution, because data are presented in reports of the Judicial Department in such a way that it is impossible to exclude them from this category.

^17. “Rol’ sotsial'nykh institutov,” Levada-tsentr, February 12, 2015 (www.levada.ru/12-02-2015/rol-sotsialnykh-institutov, accessed August 21, 2015).

^18. “Doverie institutam vlasti,” Levada-tsentr, November 13, 2014 (www.levada.ru/13-11-2014/doverie-institutam-vlasti, accessed August 21, 2015).