Criminalization and Decriminalization in Soviet Criminal Policy, 1917-1941
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4085688 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Peter H Solomon (corresponding author) |
| Year | 1982 |
| Volume | 16 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 9-43 |
| Publication date | 1982-01-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Law & Society Review (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0023-9216 • E-ISSN: 1540-5893 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.2307/3053548 |
| OpenAlex | W2319589223 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 6 |
| References cited | 6 |
In the early and mid-1920's Soviet courts were overwhelmed with new criminal business, prompting Bolshevik leaders to transfer most cases of petty crime away from the courts either to administrative proceedings or to lay bodies (comrades' courts and village social courts). This article examines the Bolshevik experiment in decriminalization and diversion-its causes, its politics, and its consequences both for the courts and for the alternatives to them. The crisis of congestion in early Soviet courts resulted neither from a growth in actual criminal behavior nor from prosecution of new crimes devised by the Bolsheviks. It owed its origin to the elimination after the Revolution of various extrajudicial mechanisms used by the Tsars for handling infractions, thereby producing a criminalization of traditional misdeeds. The subsequent adoption by Soviet leaders of a policy of decriminalization followed careful study, and despite the turbulent times bore the mark of rational decision making. And the policy was implemented; a large number of cases were shifted first to administrative processing by police officials and then to lay tribunals, especially to the village social courts, which proved more viable than the comrades' courts which were established in factories. But the waves of diversion did not relieve court congestion, as in each instance new sorts of cases replaced those moved away. The experience tended to confirm the thesis that the amount of crime prosecuted in a society is a function of the capacity of its criminal justice institutions
Criminal law · Criminalization · Criminology · Decriminalization · Political science · Sociology · European history and politics · Law
On Research and Realities of Decriminalization of Criminal Acts in Russia
Local political power and Soviet criminal justice, 1922–41
Prohibition and alcohol control in the USSR
Canadian Publications on the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe for 1982
Canadian Publications on the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe for 1981
Who Holds the Axe? Violence and Peasants in Nineteenth-Century Russian Depictions of the Forest
| Citations per year | 0.14 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 1982 - 2019 (38) |
| Highly cited | No |