Lawmaking in the system of criminal law regulation

Introduction: the article substantiates the necessity of a separate approach to criminal lawmaking. It covers specific features of criminal laws and the requirements for the laws these features imply. Purpose: to define an acceptable model of criminal lawmaking and its basic principles, based on the analysis of current criminal legislation in connection with the features of a criminal law. Methods: the article is based on specific juridical methods of cognition (technical method and comparative law method) as well as the method of modeling and a number of sociological and general scientific methods. Results: the current state of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation is critical. The Code does not meet the basic requirements for the laws of this kind. Conclusion: the author suggests stabilizing criminal legislation, creating an independent committee for assessing the Code and framing criminal law policies, and also adopting a new model of criminal lawmaking. The author proves particular importance of law drafting documentation for subsequent interpretation of criminal law regulations. The grounding of a draft law must be complete, the law’s objective, its major characteristics and the meaning of the terms applied must be fully explained. For this purpose, it is suggested to divide draft laws into three groups: acts aimed at criminalization of a deed; acts aimed at decriminalization of a deed; acts altering other provisions of criminal law. Each draft law is to undergo a linguistic, technical, criminological and anti-corruption expert review as well as to be discussed by an independent committee. The author proves the necessity of applying a “package” method of amending the Criminal Code, which implies that amendments should be adopted once a year at most.