The Era of Mercy. Ways of Criminality Development

The article examines certain aspects of the global development of criminality in the near future. Particular emphasis is placed on several trends that are already manifesting themselves at the present time: a) growing virtualization of criminality; b) reduction of effectiveness (performance) of some forms of criminal violence; c) increase of conspiracy of criminal activity; d) growing rates of «victimless crime». In analyzing these indicators, the article offers a hypothesis of the «humanization» of modern criminality, which manifests in reducing the number of violent crimes, as less effective in the current historical context. It considers some particular examples of criminal activity that confirm the authors' conclusions (for example, cookie-dropping, hidden mining, unobvious frauds). In general, an analysis of the current state of affairs allows to make a conclusion about the extremely topical issue of systematic and comprehensive assessment of the expected Internet threats, comparative study of methods to counter them in the context of various legal systems and the ability of national legislation to adequately respond to new challenges.