Liberalization and Humanization of Criminal Law Policy

The goal of the article is to define modern trends in criminal law policy in the Russian Federation. More thorough research should be carried out in connection with lively scientific discussions on defining the essence of criminal policy and the lack of a universal understanding of the contents and key trends of developing criminal law policy. The author researched two components of criminal law policy which are currently trending in the research community — humanism and liberalization. The author’s own understanding of these characteristics is presented in the article. The author also studied the clauses of the Concept of criminal law policy of the Russian Federation from the standpoint of their correspondence to humanistic and liberal ideas and carried out an analysis of changes in Russian criminal legislation with the aim of identifying modern trends in criminal law policy. The study is carried out for the period of the latest full five years (2016–2020). It is stated that the number of laws aimed at amending the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, and the number of actually introduced amendments are diverse values. Most changes are aimed at amending the Special Part of criminal law and are connected with criminalization. There is a trend for strengthening the protection of economic interests and public security, which has a rather weak correlation with the widely recognized priority for the protection of the individual, civil rights and freedoms. In general, the analyzed period is characterized by tightening of criminal law policy. The key features of criminal law amendments are their inconsistency, lack of a system or a unified direction. The author concludes that, contrary to the expectations of the public, the humanism and liberalization are manifested very moderately at the current stage of criminal policy’s development, they do not constitute its defining characteristics and challenge its progressive character. One of the promising ways of solving the identified problems is increasing and strengthening the role of criminological research in the development of criminal law policy.