Criminal and legal characteristics of failure to report a crime (article 205.6 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation)

The article is devoted to the analysis of Art. 205.6 «Failure to report a crime» introduced into the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation in 2016, by that the legislator imposes the criminal liability for failure to report a person(s) who committed one of the crimes mentioned in the law to the authorities. Art. 205.6 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation is a legislative novel and therefore there is no uniform view among law enforcers today about the defining the crime provided for by the Article. In practice there has not been developed a unified procedure for applying this criminal and legal norm. The purpose of the article is to identify the main shortcomings in the content of the criminal and legal norm, and to suggest options for their elimination to improve the practice of its enforcement.