Role of sociological methodology in determining criteria evaluating justice of punishment in criminal law

Abstract

In modern society, the role of concept of justice is increasing. Various decisions of state authorities are assessed from the standpoint of justice or injustice. However, the concept of justice has special significance in relation to state repression. Often society reacts to the use of state coercion against individuals and such situations are widely covered in the media, spark a great public outcry, sometimes lead to various kinds of conflicts between a part of society and officials. It is generally accepted that such situations of social tension are caused by the facts of excessive use of repression. However, we put forward the hypothesis that the perception of justice by society and concept of justice set out in the criminal law and perceived by the court are significantly different today, which causes systemic problems in the perception of justice. The solution to this problem is possible only with an integrated approach related to the study of the current criminal law and the potential of justice embedded in it, the perception of justice as a category in the activities of the court, as well as the idea of justice in public perception. The author had the following tasks: 1) to study the main approaches to justice in the modern system of social sciences, 2) set the parameters and forms of polling the population on the justice of punishment, 3) develop an anonymous questionnaire for judges in order to establish the factors, criteria and circumstances which they associate punishment tightening and mitigation with, 4) send the developed questionnaire to all courts of the constituent entities of the Russian Federation, 5) after the responses are received from the courts, carry out selective analysis of the sentences awarded by these courts and compare the circumstances noted in the sentences and affecting the punishment with those indicated by the judges in the questionnaires; 6) process all received sociological data and create the following scales: a) circumstances that should be regarded when assigning a just punishment based on public opinion; b) circumstances that judges regard when choosing a punishment in specific criminal cases. The article presents some results of the study conducted on the basis of a questionnaire survey of judges and the population, as well as a description of the survey methodology.