Concerning criminal liability for crime provocation

Besides provocation of a bribe or commercial payoff, stipulated in the article 304 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, provocation may concern such crimes as bribery, offences in the sphere of illegal trafficking of narcotic drugs, and various forms of embezzlement. When an official, or a police officer, initiates actions of a dependent person in order to reveal the bribery by creation of artificial conditions pushing the person to commission of a crime, such actions of the official are provocative. When carrying out a test purchase operation it is prohibited to induce (provocation) or incite the person to commit illegal actions. In a case if the given activity is prolonged for several days, in the course of the criminal case consideration the court finds that the person had been being persuaded for long and thus the crime had been provoked. In practice the provocative actions can also be a way to commit a crime. We mean the provocation, when the intention of the guilty is focused not on the provoking of a crime for the purpose of the subsequent exposure of the provoked person, but on arrangement of the situation when it is possible to harm “legally” the person “encroaching”. The provoker interferes with implementation of justice and hampers the normal work of law enforcement bodies, since the provocative actions contradict with the principle of legality specified in the federal law “Concerning the police”. The author presents a legislative initiative and suggests introducing of a corresponding regulation about the responsibility for crime provocation, by formalizing it in the article 304.1 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation.