Problems of Sentencing for Complicity

The purpose of the research. The article discusses the theoretical and applied problems of sentencing for complicity under Russian criminal law. The purpose of the research is to identify the disadvantages of legislative regulation of sentencing for complicity and to make suggestions for their elimination. Results. As a result of the research, the author comes to the conclusion that existing criminal law does not allow to fully guarantee sentencing proportionate and fair measures of responsibility for complicity and to ensure stable and consistent judicial practice. This is due to the fact that relevant legislative requirements are purely evaluative in nature and create prerequisites for excessive judicial subjectivism when determining the nature and degree of public danger of various manifestations of complicity. In this regard the author proposed to fix in The Criminal Code more deep differentiation of sentencing taking into account the form of complicity and the type of accomplice and to specify the criminal law principle of guilt to complicity. For these purposes, special rules of sentencing for complicity should be supplemented by the requirements on the inadmissibiblity of assigning a more severe punishment to an accomplice than to the perpetrator and on the inadmissibiblity of assigning a more lenient punishment to the organizer of crime than to other accomplices. In the articles of The Special part of The Criminal Code qualifying signs «group of persons», «group of persons by prior agreement» and «organized group of persons» should be fixed in different parts of the relevant articles with the establishment of their commission consistently increasing punishments. Besides, it is necessary to legislatively define that mitigating and aggravating circumstances characterizing the committed crime but not related to the identify of one of the accomplices, should be taken into account when assigning punishment only to those accomplices who were aware of the existence of such circumstances when committing a crime.

sentencing, complicity, type of accomplice, organizer of crime, accomplice, form of complicity, principle of guilt