Administrative Offence – Criminal Misdemeanor – Crime. Perspectives and Criteria Three-Tier Delictolisation in Russia

This article discusses issues of the classification and systematization of public-legal delicts in legisla­ tion on administrative offences and the criminal legislation of the Russian Federation. It is noted that the legislation on administrative offences and criminal legislation evolve in different directions; a negative assessment of current trends of development of the legislation on administrative offences is given; attention is drawn to dangerous social consequences of such a development. The Author assesses the proposal on the formation of an independent category of delicts “criminal misdemeanor” and draws attention to the fact that in the Russian legislation already has a multilevel delictolisation and the inclusion of several intermediate levels of criminal offences does not affect the situation. According to the Author, administrative offences and crimes have a common legal nature, as evidenced by the nu­ merous attempts by Russian and Soviet scientists to distinguish between them by any criteria, and should be in a sin­ gle system that would ensure the proportionality of the coercive State importance protected by legislation values.