Medvedev personally made the announcement on Tuesday while meeting with Justice Minister Aleksandr Konovalov. In Russia, the Justice Ministry includes the Federal Service for Execution of Punishment – the body that oversees the system of prisons, penal colonies and pre-trial detention centers.
“The draft law includes a number of novelties and deserves attention as it makes the criminal law more up to date, gets rid of obsolete norms that were passing from one code to another but were never observed, eliminates contradictions and introduces a new form of punishment – forced labor,” Medvedev said.
Apart from the introduction of forced labor, the bill establishes new penalties for petty economic crimes and crimes related to drug trafficking. Meanwhile, charges of libel and slander have been decriminalized and will fall under the civil code.
“The deeds that are listed as crimes in the current version of the Criminal Code are being decriminalized and after the law comes into force these acts will be persecuted as administrative offence,” the president noted.
The list of such actions pertain to libel, including cases of libeling judges involved in court cases, as well as non-qualified actions that do not cause grave consequences. » | Tuesday, June 07, 2011
