Issues Of Extremism In Modern Society And Legal Science Development In Russia

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to analyze issues of extremism. The analysis of theoretical basis of system optimization of criminal law and criminological measures aimed at extremism prevention, as well as development of specific proposals and recommendations for improvement of legislation in the field of this criminal phenomenon is given. The study addresses the issues of phenomenology and trends in criminal religious extremism. A system and structural analysis of criminological properties and features of criminal law characteristics of individual institutional and extra-institutional forms of religious extremism is carried out. The study involved formal legal and historical legal methods. The study and the synthesis of theoretical materials are carried out. The novelty in the field of research is expressed, in particular, in such provisions as definition of the author’s concept of religious extremism and criminal religious extremism. The authors analyzed features of foreign legal models of fighting against religious extremism and its types. The author’s understanding of criminological characteristics of public consciousness and trends in development of religious extremism in Russia is described. The specific personality traits of an extremist and factor complex of criminal religious extremism are described. Shortcomings of modern Russian legislation in countering religious extremism are revealed. Besides, they described and substantiated proposals for improvement of current legislation governing liability for crimes; areas for improving criminal law and special criminological measures to combat religious extremism are identified; a set of specific changes and additions to the legislation of the Russian Federation is proposed.

Keywords: Religiousextremismnationalinterestsfight

Introduction

An effective opposition to criminal religious extremism, one of the most dangerous types of extremism, is associated with the development of a system of mandatory and alternative criteria that make it possible to distinguish it from other types of social deviations, create prerequisites for consistent legislative recognition of the rules on the responsibility for certain types of crimes related to religious extremism, as well as to increase the effectiveness of planned action aimed at the fight against criminal religious extremism at all levels of government.

The issue of fighting against criminal religious extremism is connected with the interests of all countries, since an integral element of the doctrines of most extremist organizations is the principle of total war for the triumph of their ideas, without limits and rules. In the 1980s of the XXth century, the political analysts were talking about the existence of war zones, highlighting, in particular, the Middle East and Northern Ireland; however, now they note that this phenomenon has taken on a global character.

Because criminal religious extremism has acquired a global organized character, the role of cooperation of legislative, law enforcement and judicial authorities of various countries in combating this evil is significantly increasing.

As sociologists note, in the last decade in Russia there has been a trend of extremization of mass consciousness, which is reflected in the spread of non-traditional religiosity, neo-Nazi and nationalist movements, and, as a result, in the growth of a number of crimes associated with extremism. The study of the etiology and modern patterns of transformation of this phenomenon creates the necessary scientific prerequisites for predicting and preventing criminogenic changes in legal consciousness, as well as for developing legal and psychological tools for the development of tolerance of public consciousness (Badyshtova, 2013).

Despite the fact that crimes involving religious extremism constitute an insignificant proportion of all recorded crimes, their high degree of public danger is due, above all, to their qualitative properties. Such actions are objectively dangerous for a wide range of public relations, ensuring the integrity of individual, normal activities of state and non-state institutions, environmental security and other social values. Even more socially dangerous are the immediate and long-term consequences of such acts.

Problem Statement

Various aspects of the issue of criminal responsibility for extremist activities (mainly for terrorist crimes) were analyzed in the works of Zamkovoy and Ilchikov (1996). In particular, the properties of the personality of an extremist (terrorist) were studied. The proposals were made to form a system of measures to prevent criminal extremism and to improve international cooperation in this area.

Some aspects of the issues covered in this paper that relate to the legal content of freedom of conscience in Russia and the criminal law guarantees of its provision were studied Zaluzhny (2016).

The political, social and geopolitical aspects of various types of extremism (political, religious, ethnoreligious) were considered by Ryabchuk, (2011).

Nevertheless, the criminal religious extremism as a dangerous phenomenon for the society was not subject to comprehensive criminal and criminological study.

Research Questions

The low efficiency of countering criminal religious extremism is largely due to the lack of an adequate legal and institutional mechanism in the law enforcement system, an integral part of which is an effective methodology for criminological monitoring (searching, collecting, recording, analyzing, evaluating and forecasting) of activities of new religious movements, extremist organizations and neo-Nazi formations.

The national system of fighting against criminal religious extremism needs to be improved, including a procedure for monitoring and supervising the observance of legislation regulating the activities of religious and public associations, political parties, and the media, which would ensure timely prevention of transformation of these organizations into extremist communities or members of these organizations commit crimes involving religious extremism.

The legislative strengthening of the rules on responsibility for various manifestations of criminal religious extremism, as well as the practice of their official interpretation, requires improvement.

The object of research is social relations arising in the process of ensuring the security of society from the threat of criminal religious extremism, as well as the state opposition to criminal religious extremism and its types.

The subject of research is the system of concepts, the core of which is the category of criminal religious extremism, phenomenology and factor complex of criminal religious extremism, criminal law and criminological basis to counter this phenomenon.

Purpose of the Study

The purpose of analysis of this issue is to create theoretical foundations for optimizing the system of criminal law and criminological measures to combat criminal religious extremism, as well as the development of appropriate proposals and recommendations. The study resolved the issues of phenomenology and trends in the development of criminal religious extremism. A system and structural analysis of its criminologically significant properties, features of the criminal law of individual institutional and extra-institutional forms of criminal religious extremism is carried out.

Research Methods

The issues of concept operationalization of religious extremism and criminal religious extremism are due to the multidimensionality of these phenomena. The religious extremism seems to be understood as a social phenomenon that exists in the following four interrelated forms: 1) the religious consciousness (public and individual), which is characterized by totalitarianization and exaggeration of the value of a certain set of religious ideas to the detriment of all other religious and secular ideas; nihilism, i.e. the rejection of all other ideas, including religious; religious fanaticism, i.e. the unconditional belief in the truth of the only religious idea (aggregate of ideas) and the readiness to follow it under any circumstances; 2) the religious ideology (religious doctrine), which is characterized by the proclamation of the only true explanation of the problems of existing world and the proposal of unambiguous (true) ways of resolving them; the unconditional separation of all social phenomena into “good” and “evil”; giving an exclusive dominant position to one aspect of being to the detriment of everything else; the denial of objectively dominant hierarchy of general social (universal) values; ignoring or belittling the regulatory significance of any social, including legal, norms that do not correspond to the declared true religious doctrine; 3) activities for the implementation of religious doctrine, proclaimed the only true; 4) organizational forms of implementation of religious doctrine, in particular, religious extremist organizations (totalitarian sects) (Ivanov, 2013).

The peculiarities of extremist religious consciousness are manifested in the fact that a person “having rejected everything else, holds to one of the peripheral problems, gets into a corner of reality, intending to reduce his/her whole life to it” (Ivanov, 2013).

Sazonov (2000) considers the ideologies to be those that justify the use of violence to achieve their political goals. In other works the concepts of “permanent revolution”, “a single continental revolution as part of the world socialist revolution” racial, national intolerance and hostility, as well as neo-Nazism, which can “undermine the state system and the foundations of civil society”, are analyzed.

In our opinion the “extreme” feature inherent in extremist consciousness is expressed through a complete subordination to our life, the value systems, etc. Most researchers of the issue under consideration, based on the semantic approach and explanatory dictionaries, understanding by extremism an “adherence to the extreme views and measures”, associate the “extreme” with their content.

In this case, the criterion of “extremes” would be the existence of ideas that justify violence. At the same time, Stepanov (2016) considers as such the denial of the norms and rules adopted in society, and following radical (unusual and immoderate) views for a given society. This position makes it possible to classify any non-traditional or unknown ideological systems as an extremist one, with the result that Islam could be “extreme” in the territories where Christianity was historical spread, and vice versa.

Much has been said in the literature about the mandatory contingency of extremism with the violence or threat of its use.

At first glance, this position seems to be based on a significant amount of empirical material. Let us recall at least the spraying of neuroparalytic gas “sarin” in the Tokyo metro by the members of religious organization Aum Shinrikyo, acts of terrorism regularly carried out on the territory of Russia by the participants of such terrorist organizations as the Supreme Military Majlis Shura of the United Mojahedin of the Caucasus, Lashkar-e-Taiba, Taliban Movement; killing and beating by skinheads of the representatives of non-Russian nationalities, or hooligan actions of football fans (Bidova & Ossaulenko, 2016).

No matter how paradoxically it may sound, but the violence is not always a mandatory sign of extremism. Essentially, only one criterion is taken into account when choosing methods, i.e. they must ensure that the goals set in the face of an extremist ideology are achieved. Thus, the members of the associations of Jehovah’s Witnesses, in order to save their souls, in accordance with the doctrine, refuse to serve in the army and receive blood transfusions.

Therefore, the position of the authors Bidova, (2014a), Vlasov (2014), Zaluzhniy, (2016) believe that the implementation of socially dangerous, anti-constitutional or immoral acts prohibited by law is an integral feature of extremism.

However, this approach does not cover all possible forms of extremism. The same members of the associations of Jehovah’s Witnesses, following the religious doctrine, refuse to take part in secular holidays, to attend theaters, circuses. Such behavior is neither illegal nor immoral (Bondarenko, 2011).

We believe that extremism as a set of actions aimed to implement the relevant ideology can be expressed in the use of any available means.

Such activities are often associated with numerous abuses of the freedom of conscience and religion, which are expressed in the fact that the subject either goes beyond the limits of the permitted behavior, thereby limiting the rights and freedoms of other participants in legal relations (Bidova, 2014b).

Criminal religious extremism is a separate type of extremism, having its own determination and specific phenomenology. Physical violence and a threat of physical violence are not essential and mandatory signs of criminal religious extremism, which greatly complicates an effective solution to the problem of criminalization of most of its species (Bidova, 2016). An essential sign of criminal religious extremism is a specific a form of mental violence manifested in the suppression of individual’s spiritual self-consciousness, freedom of spiritual self-determination and imposition of new ideas or values against the will (Ryabchuk, 2011). The self-reproduction of criminal religious extremism, as a rule, is possible only through its organized forms that represent a qualitatively more dangerous form of this phenomenon. The feature of phenomenology of modern criminal religious extremism is the abuse of both legal organizational forms and legal means of exercising the rights and freedoms of a person and citizen, in particular, freedom of conscience and religion. A warning system for criminal religious extremism can be effective only if it contains measures aimed at all its forms (extremist consciousness, ideology, activity, organizational structures) (Telyakavov, 2014).

The study of foreign experience of establishing criminal liability for encroachment on public relations, ensuring interfaith and inter-ethnic peace, shows that the legislator, when describing the objective side of the relevant offenses, uses speech patterns that clearly describe the criminal act. Thus, in a number of countries the following is related to criminal actions: threats or incitement to violence against members of a particular group (Article 8 of the Criminal Code of Sweden, Article 135a of the Norwegian Criminal Code, Article 130 of the German Criminal Code, Article 137e of Holland); insulting persons depending on race, religion and other signs (Article 135a of the Norwegian Criminal Code, Article 257 of the Criminal Code of Poland); propaganda of national hatred (Article 249 of the Criminal Code of China) (Trunov, 2014).

It should be noted that the experience of the EU countries in forming a unified legal framework that allows them to fight organized crime, terrorism and other serious crimes is extremely important for Russia and the CIS member states.

Unfortunately, it must be stated that the rule-making activities in this area within the framework of the Commonwealth of Independent States are devoid of consistency, system and fragments.

The documents regulating legal relations in this area allow us to come to the conclusion that there is almost no absence of unifying norms of substantive law, which negatively affects the development of national legislations. So, on the territory of the CIS member states, the issue of the subject of terrorism is resolved in different ways: in Russia and in Ukraine, the responsibility begins at 14 years old, and in Belarus - at 16 years old. [16, p.465] Special rules criminalizing the creation of a terrorist group or organization are included only in the Criminal Code of Ukraine (Part 4. Article 258 “Terrorist act”) and the Criminal Code of Georgia (Article 327 “Establishment or management of terrorist organization”, Article 328 “Association in a foreign terrorist organization or in the same organization controlled by a foreign state, or rendering assistance to it”). There is no commonality of approaches in establishing responsibility for the promotion of its activities (Uzdenov, 2016a; Uzdenov, 2016b).

The procedural support for counter-terrorism is lagging behind the European level. In particular, extradition is still the only instrument that allows criminal prosecution of a person who committed a crime in one of the countries of the Commonwealth and hid in the territory of another.

It seems that there are two possible ways to solve the problem of creating a unified legal framework to combat various manifestations of extremism, including terrorism (Ustinov, 2013).

The first way is the independent integration of each CIS member state into the international space and, in particular, into the European legal space. Such an approach will provide a solution to the problem of unifying national legislative systems of the CIS member states at a higher geopolitical level.

The second (more preferable) way is the improvement of the system of international treaties in the field of combating extremism within the framework of the CIS, taking into account current trends (abandonment of extradition procedures, the use of a rough approach in constructing the concepts of terrorism and extremism, widespread use of confiscation as a type of criminal penalties for crimes of a terrorist nature and extremism, etc.) (Ustinov, 2012a).

In this study, we proceed from the premise that the prevention of criminal religious extremism is at the same time the most important element of the general system of measures aimed to combat this phenomenon as well as the priority direction of criminal policy in this area.

In the criminological literature, the theoretical foundations of crime prevention and its individual types are developed quite well, which makes it possible to dwell on the analysis of only the most relevant and debatable aspects, and of particular importance for the prevention of criminal religious extremism.

In modern criminological literature, it is customary to differentiate between general and special measures for the prevention of crimes. For objective reasons, the development of general measures for the prevention of criminal religious extremism, i.e. measures that objectively (apart from their goal-setting) ensure the prevention of this phenomenon are carried out outside the framework of criminology and the science of criminal policy (Ustinov, 2012b). At the same time, the “burden of responsibility” for understanding the preventive focus and adjusting the scientific validity of general preventive measures of the considered type of criminal activity lies on these sciences. Among general measures, the following are identified by specialists: elimination of economic, political and social inequality; re-allocation of global financial resources in favor of the countries with the declining economies; building a multipolar political space; rejection of the policy of double standards in the field of international relations; creation of non-confessional institutions of spiritual development, etc. Accordingly, legal provisions of general preventive measures listed above are attributed to the general legal measures aimed at prevention of criminal religious extremism (Biancki, 2011).

At the same time, it is completely obvious that the methodology of criminological analysis of general measures for the prevention of criminal religious extremism today leaves much to be desired and deserves more than one fundamental research. In this regard, the applicant in this chapter found it reasonable to dwell on the issues of developing a complex of special legal, organizational and informational (educational, educational and propaganda) preventive measures for criminal religious extremism, which, as shown by factor analysis of criminal religious extremism, form the basis of a system of special preventive measures against criminal religious extremism (Guedan, 2007).

A special crime prevention is a purposeful activity of state bodies, civil society institutions, and individual citizens to identify, mitigate and eliminate factors that cause the spread and (or) increase in the public danger of criminal religious extremism or its certain types (Westle, 2012).

As an essential element of crime prevention system one may consider the activity aimed at the elimination of personality deformations that develops motivation for criminal behavior.

The problem of neutralizing the ideological and propaganda influence of extremist organizations on the population, namely the prevention of advertising terrorism, fanaticism and extremism; glorification of terrorists and extremists, as well as justification of their activities; exceptions from the information materials describing in detail the methods of committing a crime remain unresolved to this day.

We believe it is possible to make the following changes:

1) make changes in Art. 4 of the Law “On Mass Media”, adding the words “and propaganda” after the word “implementation”;

3) supplement Part 2 of Art. 29 of the draft Federal Law “On Counter-Terrorism” with the Clause 6, stating it in the following wording: Information containing a detailed description of the methods of committing a crime of a terrorist nature.

At the same time, we consider it necessary to note that effective prevention of criminal religious extremism is impossible without solving the whole complex of social (integration of marginal elements, migrants into society), political and economic issues (poverty, migration).

In the paper only some issues of preventing criminal religious extremism were touched upon. There were also revealed the conditions for insufficient effectiveness of this activity; proposed a three-level system for creating a legal basis for preventing various forms of extremism; and also stated the directions for the development of organizational, informational, educational foundations for preventing extremism.

Findings

According to the authors, the term religious extremism should be understood as an integral set (system) of socially dangerous acts recognized as crimes, aimed at the formation and dissemination of religious ideas (sets of religious ideas) arbitrarily declared true to the detriment of all other religious or secular ideas, and also on the implementation of these ideas in criminal ways.

During the study five typical forms were identified: 1) institutional criminal religious extremism, i.e. extremism, which has organizational forms that are expressly prohibited by criminal law (Art. 239, 2821, 2822 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation); 2) an isolated extra-institutional criminal religious extremism, in relation to which the signs of attitude to religion or religious motive are directly indicated in the text of the law (Article 282 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation); 3) non-segregated extra-institutional criminal religious extremism, in relation to which signs of a religious motive or attitude to religion are not explicitly indicated in the text of the law (Article 280 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation); 4) terrorism and other crimes of a terrorist nature committed for religious reasons; 5) socially dangerous abuse of freedom of conscience and religion.

Under socially dangerous abuses of the freedom of conscience and religion in accordance with the criminal law of Russia one should understand the religious goals or motives for encroaching on human life and health; physical freedom (freedom to choose a place of stay and movement) of a person; sexual integrity and sexual freedom; legal interests of the family, the rights and freedoms of minors; including those related to the exercise of the right to general education; constitutional rights and freedoms of a person and a citizen; property and procedure for economic activity; public health and moral; fundamentals of state security in the part related to ensuring equal rights of citizens; interests of public service and service in local governments; service interests in other organizations; management procedures associated with ensuring the implementation of civil duties; peace and security of mankind.

The classification of factors of criminal religious extremism can be carried out using the author’s concept of a two-dimensional factorial complex, which involves the separation of all factors of the phenomenon under investigation into common (which are the factors of religious extremism in general) and specific, i.e. related to the essence of criminal religious extremism.

The authors highlighted the following main trends in the development of criminal extremism in Russia: a) formation of stable social groups that support the ideology of extremism; b) formation of beliefs about the permissibility of using violence to resolve any conflicts in the society; c) increase in the number of “national” religious groups whose activities are associated with encroachment on the person and rights of a person and citizen; d) improvement of the level of organization of extremist groups, including the creation of a peculiar system of succession and personnel training; e) merging extremist associations with organized criminal groups of transnational, common and economic nature; f) institutionalization and legalization of extremist organizations, their leaders; the penetration of such organizations and their members into the political elite of the country; g) globalization of extremism; h) use of constitutional rights and freedoms in order to promote the ideas of extremism; i) use of traditional religious institutions to spread radical ideas.

The improvement of the system of norms on responsibility for certain manifestations of criminal religious extremism can be carried out on the basis of the author’s theoretical model of a composite object of criminal encroachment and a two-dimensional classification of objects of criminal encroachment.

In its current form, the legislation is not able to provide the necessary level of protection of the rights and freedoms of citizens, the interests of society and state from criminal religious extremism.

The main directions for bringing changes to criminological anti-extremist legislation should be the introduction of amendments to laws and regulations managing the following: 1) publishing activity; 2) information security; and 3) control over the activities of religious or public associations.

Conclusion

Current state of public security and the level of protection of human and civil rights and freedoms indicates a lack of effectiveness of the measures used to combat both extremism in general and criminal religious extremism in particular.

The practice shows that criminal repression itself does not influence this phenomenon and does not ensure the protection of the interests of society and the state. In this regard, the implementation of proposals to make the criminal law stricter, as a rule, does not give the expected results unless the measures aimed to improve the spiritual and moral health of the nation are implemented.

The religious extremism is a complex phenomenon, which exits in four forms: as a state of consciousness, an ideological system, a set of actions to implement it, and also as an organizational structure.

Based on the criminal law doctrine and concepts of human and civil rights and freedoms that prevail in Russia today, only the acts themselves are subject to prohibition and punishment through criminal law, and the ideology and state of mind can be (to some extent) reflected only as motives or goals of action (“based on racial, national or religious hatred or enmity”).

However, it is the motives and goals, understood in a broad sense as a system that makes a person to act and can “turn” any criminal act into an extremist one.

This circumstance explains why the authors made an analysis of social consciousness. Based on the data of various sociological studies on tolerance carried out by other specialists, as well as taking into account the results obtained by us in the course of surveys of law students and law enforcement officers, we came to certain conclusions.

Russian society as a whole is intolerant towards representatives of various nationalities and religions. However, the “Caucasus-phobia” and “Islamophobia” are clearly manifested. Unfortunately, the same trend is typical for the law students, as well as for the law enforcement officers. Obtaining professional legal knowledge and skills in modern Russian educational environment does not ensure the assimilation of democratic and humanist norms about the equality of rights and freedoms of man and citizen, the inadmissibility of discrimination of citizens.

The described state of consciousness creates a favorable psychological basis for the spread of various extremist ideologies; therefore, it is possible to predict an increase in the number of crimes associated with various types of extremism (religious, political, ethnopolitical, etc.).

The study of an extremist personality showed that young people and adolescents, due to age-related psychological characteristics and social vulnerability, represent the most favorable environment for cultivating extremist ideologies: they join religious extremist organizations without being able to cope with everyday problems; become members of neo-Nazi groups. They suffer most from the “power” of criminal repression. Their inspirers, who are the “professional” fighters for the purity of the faith of the nation, remain practically unpunished.

Current anti-extremist legislation of Russia is extremely complex and controversial. In our opinion, in this form, it is objectively unable to ensure an effective fight against religious criminal extremism. The same can be said not only about the Russian Federation, but also about other countries of the Commonwealth of Independent States.

The gaps and contradictions inherent in Russian anti-extremist legislation are aggravated by the following factors:

• law executor finds himself or herself in a difficult situation, having no chance to make the right choice between poorly demarcated norms;

• insufficient training of law enforcement officers regarding the application of anti-extremist legislation;

• very low level of analytical support for anti-extremist lawmaking process;

• lack of judicial interpretation of the norms of anti-extremist legislation (especially the rules on criminal liability for extremist crimes).

Highly effective prevention and suppression of criminal religious extremism are impossible without the involvement of specialist knowledge from the most diverse areas (psychology, sociology, religion, psycholinguistics, etc.). However, the issues of training relevant personnel and the establishment of specialized institutions still remain unresolved.

In preventing criminal religious extremism among adolescents and young people, special attention should be given to the disciplinary measures. The secondary school can and should become one of the key actors in the early prevention of this phenomenon, implementing the principle of “nurturing through education”. This involves the inclusion of segments of moral and spiritual education in secondary school programs. Hence, not only the development of new teaching materials, guides and textbooks with the educational (and not only educational) content, but also the adoption of new state standards in the field of general secondary education, which would “legitimize” the functions of anti-extremist school education are needed. When the young generation is taught to recognize and respect the diversity of religious, national, and ethnic traditions, as well as to strive for exercising their rights and duties without violating the rights of other people, this will contribute to myth shattering, as well as development of a habit to use the legitimate conflict resolution measures.

However, such an activity will not bring the desired results if the following problems remain unsolved:

• an increasing number of homeless children and neglect of minors; new marginalization of general population;

• a delayed or inadequate response of law enforcement agencies to offenses, including crimes involving religious extremism (as evidenced by the historical experience and data from criminological research, including our study, in case of the situations of interethnic tension, any offense can lead to bad consequences);

• a shortage of professionals capable of carrying out religious education at secondary school, as well as religious education in specialized educational institutions;

• the lack of psychological rehabilitation for those who participated in the activities of totalitarian sects;

• the absence of a state ideology that would ensure the unification of Russian society and provide impetus for the development of a new (post-Soviet) identity having no connections with the religion or ethnicity.

The Russian state should officially recognize that in a multi-religious and multi-ethnic Russian society, the attempts to integrate a particular religious tradition solely on the basis of its revival are not only unproductive, but also lead to the exacerbation of existing contradictions in this area.

The leisure activities for minors and young people, assistance in their employment, and social support for disadvantaged families are the integral components for early prevention of criminal manifestations of religious extremism.

The state policy in the field of regulating the activities of media should be reduced not only to prevent the spread of extremism through the media, but also suggest the possibility of using them to form attitudes of tolerant consciousness, to promote tolerance.

The preventive activities can lead to the desired effect of eliminating or weakening the influence of factor complex of criminal religious extremism only if they are complex, social- and economic-oriented, system-based, legitimate, and are based on the legal framework.

In this regard, this study substantiated the need to form a three-tier system of legal support for the prevention of criminal religious extremism and developed a conceptual model of such system, including:

• federal law on crime prevention, which creates a legal basis for general, special and individual prevention of any type of crime, not only by means of applying measures aimed at the restriction of rights and freedoms of citizens who have committed administrative offenses, but also measures of social and psychological patronage to persons who found themselves in difficult living situations;

• a subsystem of regulatory legal acts regulating the prevention of certain types of crimes and other offenses creating a criminal background of religious extremism (terrorism, organized crime, laundering (legalization) of money and other property obtained by criminal means, corruption, illicit drug trafficking and psychotropic substances, illicit arms trafficking, illegal migration, etc.);

• a subsystem of regulatory legal acts that provide comprehensive reform of the legal framework for the special prevention of criminal religious extremism (criminological anti-extremist legislation), in order to eliminate contradictions and gaps in this system. At the same time, the main directions of such a reform should be the elimination or minimization of informational and organizational-structural factors of criminal religious extremism.

Despite the fact that the criminal repression effectiveness aimed at combating criminal religious extremism is low, the legislator, according to the applicant, cannot neglect his or her duty to constantly improve the criminal law measures to combat this type of crime. In this case, the following ideas should be the basis for such improvements:

• to limit the possibilities for arbitrary interpretation of signs of crimes of an extremist nature by the law-executor;

• to develop a system of criminal law measures taking into account the nature and public danger of criminal religious extremism (in particular, inclusion of psychological compulsory measures into this system);

• to establish additional guarantees for fair punishment in case of extremist crime commitment;

• to limit negative consequences resulting from criminal liability measures imposed to persons found guilty of committing extremist crimes (development of an extremist prison subculture, stigmatization of random and situational extremists, contributing to the emergence of new outcasts, etc.);

to enforce Russian criminal legislation on the responsibility for crimes covered by the concept of criminal religious extremism in accordance with the international standards for combating extremism in its various manifestations.

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