Is it Important to Recognize «Engagement of a Minor in a Criminal Subculture» as an Aggravating Circumstance?

The paper discusses the proposal to introduce the «criminal subculture» definition into the legislation. An analysis of the relevant draft law submitted to the State Duma of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation is proposed. The generalization of the viewpoints on the concepts of «subculture», «anticulture», «counterculture» contained in the literature, as well as their analysis, led to the conclusion that there is no unity of opinion in science (sociology, cultural studies, psychology, anthropology) regarding these concepts. This circumstance makes it inappropriate to supplement the legislation with a controversial, contradictory definition, which can lead to the adoption of arbitrary decisions in law enforcement practice. It seems impossible to support another proposal made by the authors of the said draft law as it aims at supplementing the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (Article 63) with such an aggravating circumstance as “engaging a minor in a criminal subculture”. This is justified by the fact that this circumstance does not objectively affect either the degree of social danger of the crime or the personality of the perpetrator and, accordingly, cannot serve as a basis for increasing punishment.

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