Year of decriminalization of beatings: Why the new law does not work
Dmitry Kurkin
It has been exactly one year sincePutin signed the law on partial decriminalization of beatings against relatives and other close persons: family abuse in Russia can now be regarded as an administrative offense, the maximum penalty for which is 15 days of arrest, 30 thousand rubles of fine and 120 hours of correctional labor. The law on decriminalization made two reservations: beatings are not considered a crime if they were committed for the first time and did not cause harm to health - however, in practice, few people pay attention to them.
So at once you don’t remember the initiative, against which local law-enforcement agencies and human rights activists would act against it at one time — a rare consensus in modern Russia. But the populist logic turned out to be stronger than common sense, which suggested that the law did not work de facto (both because of the inaction of the police, who often refused to open cases under the “Beat” article, and because of the fear of the victims, who often had no place to go. from the aggressor - a potential defendant in a case where they would act as plaintiffs), cannot be replaced by a law that does not work even de jure.
Is the new beating law ineffective? Some sociologists deny this, citing statistics, which claims that in 2017, the police in Russia began to more often record beatings. But did it make it easier for the victims? Hardly: out of 51,689 people brought under the new administrative law, 40,477 escaped with fines, which averaged 5,000 rubles (which is roughly equivalent to two or three speeding fines for motorists). Will this stop the aggressors next time? In theory, it should, because the first case of beatings is not considered criminal - this factor of the “first time” was particularly opposed by supporters of decriminalization (“Well, if you think about it, slap it in the back of it - why now, right in prison for this?”).
In practice, the opposite often happens, and this is confirmed directly by Interior Minister Vladimir Kolokoltsev, who drew attention to the fact that minimum fines do not stop the violence: "Often this measure is not a serious deterrent, and when it comes to close people, it imposes on the family more and additional financial burden. " And really, who wants to write a statement about beatings, if his only result is a reduction of the family budget (most often the total) by 5,000 rubles? This is also reflected in the statistics (compiled by the end of September 2017), according to which out of 164 thousand allegations of beatings, only 7 thousand were investigated as crimes.
The goal of the law on beatings, in any version of it, should not be to increase the number of people brought to justice for assault and reduce
And besides numbers, there are also victims - very specific, non-statistical. This is a resident of Serpukhov, whom her husband chopped off his hands with an ax: before that, the woman reported physical abuse from her husband, but the matter did not move beyond the educational conversation with the district police officer. This is a resident of the Solnechnogorsk region of the Moscow region who was brutally murdered by her husband out of jealousy: the police convinced her not to submit an application, despite a clear threat to her life (one can only guess what lies behind the phrase “brought to the forest and almost killed”, but such cases most often qualify as "beatings" - as opposed to the more rigid, 117th article of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation "Tortures"). This is a child from Kamchatka, beaten by the Ministry of Defense officer just for throwing a snowball at his car - the beating court did not award the defendant even a fine, precisely because the article about the beatings was withdrawn from the Criminal Code. This is an elderly woman from Perm, who was beaten to death by her own son, unemployed and previously convicted, because of two thousand rubles of pension.
Marie Davtyan and Anna Rivina from the project “Violence. No” rightly point out that the aim of the law on beatings in any version should be not to increase the number of people prosecuted for assault, but to reduce the victims. They also explain that the previous article on beatings was considered preventive: bringing it to justice should have prevented much more serious crimes. Obviously, the current law does not cope with this task, either directly or indirectly.
The feeling of helplessness pushes the victims of beatings (according to statistics, most often women and children) to extreme measures. That is why we have to talk about Oksana Tkachenko from Barnaul, who killed her husband in an attempt to protect her son from beatings and was sentenced to six years and eight months in prison. And about Galina Katorova from Nakhodka, who, fleeing from the beatings, killed her husband - she faces seven years in prison.
Strictly speaking, no one allowed beatings. But the removal of criminal responsibility for them for people who do not like to go into details (the very first time clauses and the absence of harm to health), had just such an effect. In Russia, it is not the first year that they are trying to turn the family into a closed institution, to which human rights - to life, dignity and physical integrity - do not seem to apply: take at least a comment from the Russian Orthodox Church that "loving use of physical punishment" for children inherent parental right. Against the background of propaganda of family ideas almost from school, it looks particularly absurd. Those who argue that the family should be a "strong wall" do not seem to mind that this wall was also a prison wall.
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