Punishment
The social control over deviance (including criminality) is one of the major problems in the modern world. Street crime, organized crime, violent crime, terrorism, and so on, affect people and give rise to «moral panic» and «fear to crime» (Cohen, 1973). Legislators, politicians, police and criminal justice officials try, often habitually, repressive methods to gain control over criminality, drug abuse and drug trafficking, prostitution, corruption, terrorism, etc. However, traditional measures have not obtained the desired results.
Social control is the mechanism of self-organizing and self-preservation of society by the establishment and maintenance of normative order, by elimination, neutralization, or minimization of deviant behavior (including crimes). Two basic methods of social control are encouragement and punishment («bait and switch»).
The social control over criminality includes general methods of social control – punishment, «war on crime» by means of reprisals, and crime prevention. Mankind has tried all means of reprisal, including qualified kinds of death penalty and refined torture. However, criminality for some reason, has not disappeared…
There are some points of view that exists about what inhibis control of crime – «crisis of punishment» (Mathiesen, 1974), crisis of the criminal justice systems, crisis of the criminal-law control over criminality, including the control of police (Christie, 1981; Davis and Anderson, 1983; Pep-inski and Quinney, 1991; Hendrics and Byer, 1996; Rotwax, 1996; Christie, 2000, and others). Movement of abolitionism develops and grows towards cancellation not only of the death penalty, but also towards replacement of imprisonment by alternative measures of punishment, for transition from the retributive justice to the restorative justice (Morris, 1989; Zehr, 1990; Consedine, 1995; and others).
R. Lenoir (1974) and S. Paugam (1996), N. Luhmann (1998) and J. Young (1999) wrote about the new social global situation – the tendency to divide people and societies into inclusive and exclusive. «Inclusive» is the personality inclusive in the functional system. «Exclusive» can be only individual not inclusive in the functional system, who are known only by existence (Luh-mann). The distinction of inclusion/exclusion exist between countries (global inclusion/exclusion) and between people within some countries (national inclusion / exclusion).
From our point of view, the social and economic inequality is one of the biggest criminogenic factors. People have real opportunities to satisfy their needs, depending on their belonging to one or the other social class, stratum, and group or depending on their social and economic status. Inequality of opportunity generates social conflict, dissatisfaction, envy, and at last, various forms of deviation. The process of inclusion/exclusion is acquiring more and more criminogenic and deviantogenic significance, both for the contemporary world and for the future. It is clear that «excluded people» are becoming a mass reserve, a social basis of social deviation, including criminality.
Repressive social control is the best means of exclusion, especially through the issue of selection in the police and the judiciary. There appears to be a cir-culus vitiosus (vicious circle). The repressive mode of social control enhances the amount of the excluded people. The more people are excluded, the higher the deviance (including crime) rate seems to be. The higher the rate of deviance, the more repressive the social control is considered to be.
The basic tendencies of the theory (and in the practice of some countries) of the modern Western policy of the social control over criminality are as follows:
• Recognition of irrationality and inefficiency of the reprisals («crisis of punishment»),
• Change of the strategy of social control from «war» to «peace» and «peacemaking» (Pepinski and Quinney).
• Search for alternative (non-repressive) measures of social reaction.
• Priority of crime prevention (for our opinion about crime prevention see: Gilinskiy, 1998).
• Realization of the conceptof «restorative justice».
• Realization of the concept of «community policing».
The interrelation between the police and the population is old («eternal») and is a complicated problem. The centuries old experience shows that these relations between the police and the public a not friendly and ideal. The increase of crimes after the World War II, «fear of crime» and «moral panic» activate the search for effective methods and means of social control over crime. One of the strategies developed is community policing (Kury, 1997; Lab, Das, 2003; Skogan, Hartnett, 1997). The notion of community policing is not very easy. It has many definitions (Lab, Das, 2003: 4-9). The main idea of «community policing» is the partnership and, cooperation between the police and the community (population, citizens) for better crime prevention. The police render service to citizens (tax-payers). It is a pity, that the partnership between the Russian «Militia» and the community is an illusion in contemporary Russia.
The real strategy of criminal policy is absent in Russia. There are some de jure programs, but there are not really operational without the financing, mechanism for realization. Unfortunately, de facto crime control is still dominated by repressive approaches in contemporary Russia.
The current punishment system in Russia stipulates the following types of criminal punishment: the death penalty (Art. 59 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, 1996 – CC RF); life imprisonment (Art. 57); deprivation of freedom (Art. 56); limitation of freedom (up to 5 years, Art. 53); arrest (up to 6 months, Art. 54); corrective labor (up to 2 years, Art. 50); compulsory labor (up to 240 hours, Art. 49); fines (Art. 46); deprivation of the right to hold a certain position or to conduct certain activities (up to 5 years, Art. 47); confiscation of property (Art. 52); and the deprivation of military or special titles (Art. 48). In addition, military personnel may be sentenced to serve in special disciplinary units (up to 2 years, Art. 55) and there are various compulsory measures of education and supervision for minors (14-17 years, Art. 90).
The last Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (CC RF) from 1996 contains very severe kinds of punishment: death penalty, life imprisonment, and deprivation of freedom for 20 years. In no other previous Criminal Codes of Russia, including during Stalin's period, were there any sanctions like life imprisonment, up to 30 years. Moreover, some kinds of probation and parole (deprivation of freedom with suspended sentence) have been excluded from the new CC RF. In fact, the last amendments to the Criminal Code (December, 2003) were steps toward liberalization, but a very timid step.
There is a moratorium of the death penalty from 1997, but the Russian Parliament («Duma») does not ratify this.
We see tendency toward cutting down the severity of punishment without the deprivation of freedom in the penal and sentencing practice (table 9) – the quota of corrective labor without deprivation of freedom has decreased (from 26.4 % in 1988 to 5.2 % in 2001) while the quota of fine has decreased (from 16.8 % in 1987 to 6.3 % in 2001).
Table 9. Punishment in Russia (1986-2001)
Source: Crime and Delinquency. Statistical Review. Annual. Moscow: MVD RF, MJ RF.
