Significantly about the Insignificant: Practice of Applying Part 2 of Article 14 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation

this publication continues the research of the paired category “significant – insignificant” in criminal law carried out through the prism of the requirements the society imposes on criminal proceedings and presented in previous issues of the journal. Purpose: to analyze issues of liability and its intersectoral differentiation for petty theft, consider the essence of institutions of “significance” and “insignificance” in criminal law through the prism of the concept of “zero tolerance” to the offense, and develop specific scientific and practical recommendations for legislators and law enforcement officers. Methods: historical, comparative legal, dialectical cognition, analysis and synthesis. Results: the criminal law doctrine concerning the category of the size of the stolen (“significant”, “large” and “especially large”) is studied. The author analyzes a romantic concept of the “Thaw” period, such as “to transfer all cases of minor crimes to comrades’ courts”, and relatively young institution of “zero tolerance” for persons punished for qualified petty theft according to the rules of the Administrative Code of the Russian Federation (Part 2 of Article of the Administrative Code of the Russian Federation). The author tries to characterize the essence of public danger of crimes in the field of repeat petty theft. Various approaches to determining the nature and degree of levels of public danger of crimes committed by persons already punished for committing petty theft are analyzed. An attempt is also made to carry out a conditional gradation of public danger of the analyzed and heterogeneous category of crimes, depending on public danger of the object of encroachment. The author, among other things, reflects some new ideas of differentiation of the subject of the crimes under consideration. Subsequent articles will present results of the study of the practice of applying provisions of Part 2 of Article 14 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation contained in the decisions of the First General Jurisdiction Court of Cassation, a substantive analysis of rational and irrational in classifying certain actions as criminally punishable acts, as well as results of the author’s monitoring of the practice of applying Article 158.1 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation.