THE SCIENTIFIC AND TECHNOLOGICAL REVOLUTION AND SOME ISSUES IN THE FIGHT AGAINST CRIME

V. A. REMENSON

(Submitted by the Department of Criminal Law of Tomsk University)

The rapid development of science, resting on the material base of the growing productive forces, is one of the principal features of the modern epoch.

The outcome of the competition between the two world socio-economic systems is determined to a significant degree by the fullest possible use of the achievements of science in both the material and the spiritual life of society.[^1]

One aspect of the scientific and technological revolution is the ever greater penetration of science into all spheres of state administration of society and the broadest application of scientific methods in guiding social processes.

This fully applies also to the problems of the struggle to eradicate crime and to eliminate all the causes that give rise to it.

The survivals of the past in the consciousness of a certain part of the people—the immediate cause of crime—can be eradicated only on the basis of scientific management of the processes of combating crime, for, as V. I. Lenin noted, “no dark force can withstand the alliance of the representatives of science, the proletariat, and technology.”

In the era of the scientific and technological revolution in the USSR, the problems of the fight against crime are becoming still more urgent. The sharply more complex tasks of social development require still greater coordination of the efforts of all working people of socialist society, an increase in every citizen’s sense of responsibility for the performance of his duty to society and the state. This is inseparably connected with the growing role of each human personality both in the process of production and in the processes of social distribution, in the processes of managing produc-

the creation, development, and multiplication of spiritual values, and the upbringing of the younger generation.

Under these conditions, the social danger of crimes acquires new aspects. And here the issue is not only that the growing capabilities of an individual person may be used to cause such substantial harm to public material interests as was impossible in the past (for example, in operating means of transport, the number, power, and speeds of which are constantly increasing; in the use of radioactive substances; in the negligent attitude of the heads of enterprises in the chemical, pulp-and-paper, and petroleum industries toward the protection of bodies of water and the air basin). The issue also concerns the increased danger of criminal encroachments upon the system of ideological relations and the moral and spiritual values of socialist society, since encroachments upon these relations and these values retard the process of communist education, exert a negative influence on the formation of the moral and ethical views of the younger generation, and impede the triumph of collectivist ideals, whose significance grows immeasurably under conditions of an intensified ideological struggle in the world arena.

The development of the scientific and technological revolution, and its acquisition of an international scale, give rise to objective tendencies toward the expansion of trade, cultural, scientific, and tourist contacts among states and peoples with different socio-political systems. International imperialism makes desperate attempts to use these contacts, as well as new technical means of mass information, for a corrupting anti-Soviet, anti-communist influence on the citizens of socialist countries. Under these conditions, criminal attempts at anti-communist sabotage, the use by imperialist agencies of individual elements of moral and everyday-life decomposition, political lack of principle, and the blunting of vigilance acquire heightened danger.

All the more urgent, therefore, is the task of sharply activating all available forces and means for the struggle against crime and of seeking out new opportunities for an offensive against crime.

The influence of scientific and technological progress on the forms and methods of combating crime cannot be considered in a straight-line manner, since it is far from always direct in character and is not unequivocal. Of course, possibilities of a direct connection are not excluded. Thus, modern achievements of science and technology make it possible to make broad use of technical means for the prevention and detection of crimes and for exposing criminals. In connection with the latter, the possibilities of more deeply implementing the principle of the inevitability of responsibility are significantly increased, and these possibilities must be fully used.

However, it would be wrong to reduce the influence of the scientific and technological revolution on the forms and methods of combating crime only to this.

The gigantic changes in the productive forces, one of which in the era of the scientific and technological revolution is science, affect the forms and methods of combating crime chiefly not directly, but through economic, basic relations, through the transformation of all elements of the superstructure conditioned by changes in the base. This is an exceptionally complex

a process of interaction in which changes in the productive forces are only the initial link, and this process, in all its complexity, can be traced and explained only as a result of profound, comprehensive social research.

In the present article we would like to draw attention to only one, but very important, aspect of the process under consideration, namely that in the fight against crime there have appeared such consequences of scientific and technological progress characteristic of socialism as the tendency toward an ever more rational approach to solving questions of public life, the development of democratic principles in the management of social processes, and the strengthening of the humanistic tendency, manifested both in increased intolerance toward all antisocial manifestations and in growing attention and concern for the fate of each individual person.

One of the manifestations of such tendencies in the field of criminal law is the strengthening of educational-corrective principles, an even more consistent reduction of punitive measures, and at the same time the creation of the necessary legal conditions for ensuring the reliable protection of society from criminal encroachments.

The possibility of the formation and relatively rapid and well-founded legislative embodiment of these tendencies was realized to a significant extent as a result of the consistent development in the USSR of scientific work on the problems of combating crime, based on the conduct of concrete sociological studies closely connected with practice.

All these elements were manifested with extraordinary clarity in a new, exceptionally important institution of Soviet criminal law—conditional sentencing to deprivation of liberty with the involvement of the convicted person in compulsory labor, established by the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of 12/VI—1970.

The basic content of this Decree is that courts have been granted the right: persons sentenced to deprivation of liberty for a term of from 1 year to 3 years may be conditionally released from actually serving the punishment in corrective-labor institutions, while at the same time being obliged to expiate their guilt by honest labor and exemplary conduct in the course of work at places determined by the bodies of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. These rules apply to persons who, at the time of conviction, have no prior convictions and have committed crimes not belonging to the category of the most dangerous—that is, to those persons who are not dangerous criminals and can be re-educated without isolation from society.

In the process of re-education, persons conditionally sentenced under the Decree of 12/VI—1970 (hereinafter, for brevity, the term “Decree” is used) are under the supervision of the bodies of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and may be conditionally released ahead of time from certain legal restrictions established for them if they prove their correction before the expiration of the term of compulsory involvement in labor.

In the event that the convicted person evades work at the place determined by the bodies of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, or systematically or maliciously violates labor discipline or the rules of residence established for him, he is sent, by court ruling, to serve the deprivation of liberty imposed by the sentence.

Such is the basic content of this legislative act.

Its fundamental significance lies in the fact that the norms of the Decree constitute a serious step in the realization of the movement, outlined as early as the Second Program of the CPSU in 1919, along the path of broad

the use of suspended sentences, the replacement of deprivation of liberty by compulsory labor while preserving freedom (see The CPSU in the Resolutions and Decisions of Congresses, Conferences, and Plenums of the Central Committee, 7th ed., vol. 1, p. 418).

The adoption of the Decree became possible because the regime of legality has been strengthened in the country, the process of eradicating crime is under way, and among persons who have committed crimes the relative proportion of accidental offenders—persons who do not pose an increased danger to society and who are therefore capable of being re-educated without isolation from society—has increased.

On the other hand, a certain positive experience has been accumulated in re-educating convicted persons under conditions that do not involve isolation from society. What is meant here above all is the experience of applying the Decree of 20 March 1964, which, on the whole, yielded positive results.

But the prerequisites for adopting the Decree may be considered in a broader aspect, taking into account the fact that the history of Soviet society has fully confirmed K. Marx’s well-known thesis on the leading role of labor in the correction of criminal offenders and the effectiveness of combining labor and means of political education without isolation from society. The experience of transferring an offender on bail for re-education by a labor collective has fully justified itself.

The Decree is a powerful means of using reliance on trust as a method of re-education, which for the first time has received broad application precisely in Soviet corrective-labor policy.

When the Decree is applied to a convicted person, work is, of course, guaranteed to him, which is possible only in a country where unemployment has been eliminated. An analysis of more than 300 cases of application of the Decree has shown that in every case, without exception, convicted persons were provided work without any delay, as a rule with account taken of the specializations they possessed.

In accordance with Article 6 of the Resolution of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of 12 June 1970, No. 5254—VII, the administrations of enterprises are prohibited from dismissing conditionally convicted persons from work during the term of punishment established by the court sentence, except in cases of conditional early release, transfer to other enterprises, referral to places of deprivation of liberty to serve the sentence, or recognition, in the established procedure, as a Group I or Group II invalid.

Let us emphasize that, for conditionally convicted persons, remuneration for labor has no special features in comparison with other workers and employees, while any violation by them of labor discipline or public order entails the application of measures of disciplinary or administrative liability in accordance with the legislation in force. It is also very important that, in accordance with the general provisions of Soviet labor legislation, the administrations of enterprises, also with respect to conditionally convicted persons, fully bear the obligation to assist them in acquiring production specialties and improving their production qualifications.

Thus, the Decree is characterized by the creation of all labor conditions necessary for re-education and testifies to a very humane attitude toward convicted persons, creating conditions in which reliance on trust, as a rule, finds a quite favorable response on the part of the convicted person.

The Decree is designed so that achievement of the aims of punishment will be

is ensured without isolation from society by the very fact of conviction, by involvement in labor, by political and educational work, by the conditions of supervision, and also by the possibility of conditional early release in the event of reform and by the threat of actual execution of deprivation of liberty for persons who do not yield to correction under conditions of freedom.

Hence follows the requirement of a careful study of the personality of the convicted person and of all the circumstances of the case when applying the Decree, so that, on the one hand, the preventive significance of punishment is not diminished, and, on the other hand, the attainment of its aims is ensured by the mildest means. It is precisely in this direction that the practice of the courts’ application of the Decree is developing.

An analysis of 180 cases of application of the Decree showed that the courts, for the most part, correctly understand these requirements. Thus, 95% of those conditionally convicted are persons who have appeared in the dock for the first time.

The analysis showed that the Decree is applied in the overwhelming majority of cases to persons who have committed less serious crimes. As for those convicted of malicious hooliganism, among them there is a considerable number of so-called “domestic” hooligans. Their removal from the family, in connection with the application of the Decree, may be regarded as a factor that to a certain extent limits the possibility of recidivism.

The comparatively low dangerousness of those conditionally convicted is also indirectly confirmed by the short terms of punishment (on average 1 year 10 months), which is below the average term of actual deprivation of liberty. Almost all of those convicted had a permanent place of residence; about 60% were married; the majority had children and lived, as a rule, with their families; unmarried persons lived with relatives.

Almost 80% of those convicted have trades fully suitable for work at the construction sites to which they were assigned; 87% at the time of conviction were engaged in socially useful labor or were studying (3%); many (about half) had good production references. The absolute majority of those conditionally convicted acknowledged their guilt, which provides good initial positions for the successful solution of the tasks of re-education.

The study of the cases (subsequently this was confirmed by a survey) shows that the majority of those conditionally convicted regard the application of the Decree to them as an act of trust, which they strive to justify.

Data on the behavior of these persons after conviction show that the main mass of those conditionally convicted justify the trust placed in them, work conscientiously, and behave decently in everyday life.

Thus, of the 355 persons studied by us who were conditionally convicted with application of the Decree and assigned to compulsory labor, during the period from July to January 1970 only 8 persons committed new crimes; of these, only two, as having failed to justify the court’s trust, were sent to correctional-labor colonies to serve there the term of deprivation of liberty imposed by the court.

In most cases, the ineffectiveness of the use of the norms of the Decree is due either to shortcomings in the study of the personality of the person conditionally convicted by the time the sentence is passed, or to the unjustified application of this type of conditional conviction to persons with respect to whom there were data excluding the possibility

to draw a conclusion about their capacity for reform without isolation from society.

Such errors, although they do not occur often, are impermissible, since in such cases not only is the re-education of convicted persons not ensured, but the general preventive purpose of punishment is also violated. Practice shows that the Decree is beginning to find fairly broad application. Thus, in Tomsk Oblast this Decree was applied in the third quarter of 1970 in every tenth case of conviction.

The use of the new form of suspended sentence has made it possible to carry out re-education without isolation from society for many persons who would have been deprived of liberty had the Decree of 12/VI—70 not been adopted.

This is the principal purpose of the Decree as a new, exceptionally important act of socialist humanism, a new means of strengthening the educational function of Soviet law and justice.

In this connection, it is necessary to take a highly critical view of the practice of certain individual judicial bodies which, in the provisions of the Decree, see above all a means for the re-education of such persons who, under the legislation in force, could quite well have been re-educated through the application of corrective labor or of the suspended sentence provided for by Article 38 of the Fundamentals of Criminal Legislation, which have fully proved their effectiveness.

It should be assumed that the Decree is intended above all not to reduce the use of punishments provided for by law that are not connected with deprivation of liberty, or of the suspended sentence provided for by Article 38 of the Fundamentals of Criminal Legislation, but to expand the practice of re-educating convicted persons without isolating them from society, which is the main thing.

The turbulent, increasing pace of the scientific and technological revolution is responsible for the high dynamism of social life. Under these conditions, the importance of scientific research into social processes grows, as does the importance of the timely and precise clarification of the tendencies of their development and their possible consequences.

This fully applies to legal science and, in particular, to those of its subdivisions that study the problem of combating crime. Hence there inevitably follows the task of expanding and deepening concrete social studies of the effectiveness of the legislation in force, so that, on their basis, the most rational ways of improving legal norms and the practice of their application may be determined in a timely and creative manner.

One of the vivid pieces of evidence of this is the emergence of a new form of suspended sentence and the urgent tasks of studying the practice of its application.