The Ministry of Justice proposes to change the financial thresholds according to which large and especially large thefts are determined in Russia. If the initiative is accepted, the first index will increase from 250 thousand to 1.5 million rubles, the second - from 1 million to 6 million rubles. This will be the first change in 23 years.
The department believes that the criminal legislation should take into account the real value of the money, and not continue to live in the economic conditions of the early 2000s. During this period, cumulative inflation for individual trains exceeded 400%. An amount that could really be considered large back then has a completely different economic weight today.
At the same time, the Ministry of Justice supported the Interior Ministry's proposal to raise the threshold for petty theft from 2.5 thousand to 5 thousand rubles, and the minimum amount of significant damage caused to a citizen - from 5,000 to 10,000 rubles.
The financial thresholds determine to a large extent according to which section and part of the section the act will be qualified, how severe the punishment will be and under which legal regime the violation will fall. Therefore, changing the criteria can significantly affect the practice of investigating and examining theft cases.
It can be determined that the state recognizes the problem, which has been repeatedly discussed from the point of view of criminal law. Therefore, inflation reduces not only wages, savings and fines, but also the legal criteria themselves. If the thresholds remain unchanged for decades, criminal liability begins to cover a wider and wider range of acts, although their actual scope in the economy is gradually decreasing.
But this initiative also has a downside. Raising the threshold should not become a treat for those who systematically steal small amounts or cause significant damage to citizens. Therefore, for example, the Ministry of Justice considers it necessary to consider the position of law enforcement officials.