The moment was right
In Russia, it turns out, a moratorium on the death penalty can be lifted (purely theoretically, but many of our current practitioners are yesterday’s theorists). This idea was expressed in his new book by the chairman of the Constitutional Court of Russia Valery Zorkin, which shocked Russians, whose imagination is already inflamed by recent events.
Photo: ru.wikipedia.org
“If the idiot who urinated on the portrait of a veteran was given four years in prison, then they will now be shot for really serious crimes! And how many innocent people are executed by mistake or malice?” – individual citizens reacted to the sayings of the “chief judge of the country”.
In general, at no other time would the media have quoted a book in the news (even if of such authorship). But the moment turned out to be, frankly, very “suitable”. And although Zorkin himself did not mean anything bad (we hope), his words were perceived as a warning.
To begin with, it would be correct to quote the Chairman of the COP in full. “The fact that the Constitutional Court has made a decision making it impossible to apply the death penalty in Russia at this historical stage of its development does not exclude the possibility of a return to this measure of punishment in the future.” That is, nothing concrete, just a hypothetical possibility. Moreover, Zorkin further explains: “I really hope that the departure made by our country from the law in the direction of those moral and religious views,those who stand on the positions of principled rejection of the death penalty will be successful for Russia.” Let’s try to analyze what the head of the Constitutional Court said. And he said literally the following: while the decision of the Constitutional Court is in effect, according to which it is impossible to execute, but who knows what awaits us in the future? That is, he warned that this decision could be changed. What if he thereby signaled that such initiatives are already coming from certain forces and that the return of the death penalty is quite real? I’m afraid that’s exactly the case.
I have heard more than once or twice from high-ranking security officials that it is time to stop “coddling all kinds of criminal trash”, that there is no need to try to correct someone, and even more so it is not worth supporting those who are currently serving a life sentence at the expense of the state. They seriously believe that the death penalty will solve almost all problems. Is this a sincere delusion or a deliberate lie?
To begin with, a return to the death penalty would be a violation of international agreements. In this case, in the eyes of the world community, we would look both madcaps and savages at the same time. Today, after all, there is a tendency towards further humanization, when progressive countries are already seeking the abolition of not only the death penalty (where it has been preserved), but even life imprisonment (for example, Portugal and the whole of South America).
Secondly, criminologists have proved that in states where the death penalty remains, no less crimes are committed. Strict punishment, contrary to popular opinion, does not contribute to reducing the criminalization of society. Want an example? The crime rate in Iran, where the death penalty is practiced, is the same as in the Scandinavian countries, where there is not only it, but also in principle cruel punishments. During my journalistic activity, I have talked with many scarycriminals. So, none of them at the time of the crime was thinking about punishment, and the realization that they could be executed would not have stopped him. Crime is influenced not by severity, but by social, economic and other factors. As the famous criminologist Danil Sergeev said: “Those who commit crimes are not at all afraid of punishment, and those who do not commit it are not doing it out of fear of punishment.” It turns out that those who advocate the death penalty are simply engaged in substitution of concepts.
As for the maintenance of life convicts. In fact, there are not so many of them — about 2000 people, and in most colonies they work, in fact, they pay the costs of their maintenance. Besides, how many of them could be innocent? No one will tell you that. But as long as they are alive, they have a glimmer of hope for justification.
The quote from Zorkin’s book was distributed in the media not by chance. People live in suspense: what kind of cruelty will the security forces come up with? Now they are clearly winning: people are not being released from arrest, human rights organizations that helped citizens are being liquidated or recognized as foreign agents, sites on human rights topicsthey’re closing it. Against the background of all this, the lifting of the moratorium on the death penalty will plunge society into a state of stupor. In this case, no one can guarantee that he will not be arrested and executed for someone’s malicious intent. The most paradoxical thing is that even those security forces who “drown” for maximum severity and cruelty cannot guarantee this.