Russian Criminal Justice in 2009: an appraisal

This report relies on unparalleled evidence from the universe of convicted people in 2009’s Russia. It exposes new facts and figures on crime and
punishment severity in the country. Even though the data vintage is 2009 it reveals important timeinvariant patterns in law enforcement and criminal activity. The scope of the evidence and its level of detail make the report stand out in the field of criminology and empirical legal studies.

Russia, world’s second largest judiciary, enjoys an unmatched national system of court statistics. The country collects large amount of data on criminal cases in courts of general jurisdiction. The report benefited from this information to show how justice is carried on a country-wide scale. It offers detailed statistics on convicted persons, crimes committed and sentence outcomes for all Russian judiciary in 2009. Furthermore, the report sets out to explain how judges decide guilt or innocence and assign punishments.
The report is quite unique worldwide in its data and analytical approach. The Booker Report issued by the United States Sentencing Commission can be considered the closest analogue of Russian Criminal Justice in 2009: an appraisal. However, the former report is focused only on one narrow question of sentencing disparities in the federal judiciary of the United States where some 100,000 people are convicted annually. In contrast, the present report is based on the case outcomes for 1,000,000 accused people in all criminal courts. It is wide in its scope of analysis, answering many questions on crime, punishment and their relation with convict characteristics.
While the composition of crime is stable in time, the answers provided are still relevant.
The first chapter of the report describes socio-demographic characteristics of the accused people in relation to the general population. The second chapter classifies crimes and reports on how they were committed. The third chapter analyses procedural aspects of criminal adjudication. The fourth chapter presents summary statistics on punishments assigned and their severity. The fifth chapter explains how judges decide and shows which groups of the accused people enjoy more favourable treatment in the courtroom. The report concludes with the sixth chapter which studies migrant criminality and the response of criminal justice system.

You can download the original full text in Russian and the press-release in English