On the Foreign Practice of Applying the Death Penalty and Chemical Castration as Measures of Criminal Legal Impact

Abstract

Introduction: the fact of the continued existence of the death penalty jointly with an actual ban on its use underline the negative trend of sexual assault crimes in the respect of minors and indicate the expediency of finding an answer to the question of the optimal building of a domestic criminal legal impact system. Purpose: determination of the existence prospects in the Russian criminal law of such measures of impact as chemical castration and the death penalty. Methods: the research methodology is based on dialectical materialism. Both general scientific (systemic-and-structural and Aristotelian, inductive and deductive methods, as well as analysis and synthesis) and special (legalistic, rather-legal) methods were used. Results: it is indicated that the forced use of chemical castration to persons with disorders of sexual preference could be justified, provided that problems related to the short duration of the drug’s exposure and secondary effects of its use are resolved. In the current conditions, it is permissible to apply this measure on a dispositive basis (as a basis for parole). There have been highlighted three key arguments against the death penalty: the absence of effectiveness (USA, Indonesia, Nigeria, India, Pakistan); the injustice (disproportionality) of this punishment (USA, Malaysia, India); the discriminatory nature of the death penalty (for political reasons, the criterion of race and belonging to sexual minorities (USA); according to the criterion of class/caste (Nigeria); by economic and social status and gender (India). It is concluded that these circumstances, coupled with such negative factors as judicial errors, the cost and duration of appeal procedures, the Death Row Phenomenon and the widespread Colorado Method, indicate unequivocal doctrinal support for the rejection of the death penalty as an instrument of national criminal policy. Conclusions: the refusal of the Russian Federation to use the death penalty is within the framework of a foreign trend to exclude this measure of punishment from the arsenal of law enforcement agencies due to the huge number of problems with its application and empirically unconfirmed effectiveness.