The State Duma adopted in the second and third readings a bill according to which the commission of a crime by a police officer will no longer be considered an aggravating circumstance. Information about this appeared in the database of bills.
Amendments were made to Art. 63. (“Circumstances aggravating punishment”) of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation. Changes to the article stating that a deliberate crime by an employee of an internal affairs body is an aggravating circumstance appeared in 2010, they were introduced by the then President Dmitry Medvedev.
The explanatory note to the new changes states that this paragraph discriminates against employees of the Ministry of Internal Affairs compared to employees of other law enforcement agencies – courts, prosecutors, the FSB, FSO, the National Guard, the Federal Penitentiary Service, military police, customs.
The Prosecutor General's Office of the Russian Federation claims that according to its data, employees of all law enforcement agencies commit less than 1% of all crimes in Russia, and the employees of the Ministry of Internal Affairs account for only one third of this percentage.