Lapshin V.F. Administrative Prejudice – A Technique of Legislative Drafting in Criminal Law: “Necessary!”, “No!” or “Somehow Like This...”
DOI: https://doi.org/10.15688/lc.jvolsu.2026.1.3
Valery F. Lapshin, Doctor of Sciences (Jurisprudence), Professor, Vice-Rector for Scientific Work and Legal Affairs, Yugra State University, Chekhova St, 16, 628012 Khanty-Mansiysk, Russian Federation, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. , https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8549-6305
Introduction: during the implementation of the policy of humanization of criminal legislation, the technique of administrative prejudice began to be actively used in constructing offenses. The criminal law included norms on liability essentially for repeated commission of administrative offenses. Such acts clearly do not have the level of public danger inherent in a crime, and therefore, the question of the usefulness and expediency of using administrative prejudice in criminal law remains unresolved. Purpose: to determine the conditions under which administrative prejudice can be applied, creating additional opportunities to prevent the commission of new crimes and excluding the criminalization of offenses that do not pose a significant public danger. The methodology is represented by a set of the general scientific and specific scientific methods traditionally used in legal research: dialectical, inductive and deductive, comparative law, system-structural, analysis, synthesis, and other methods of scientific cognition. Results: almost all cases of using administrative prejudice established criminal liability for acts that do not have the public danger characteristic of a crime. Such decisions exacerbate the problem of excessive criminalization of the national criminal law. The description of a criminogenic feature using the technique of administrative prejudice is carried out in the violation of the rule of legislative technique on the unified use of legal terms, which reduces the quality of criminal law prescriptions and complicates their interpretation and application. Conclusions: as a general rule, administrative prejudice as a technique of legislative drafting should not be used in forming norms of the Special Part, since the fact of repeated or multiple commission of an “analogous act” does not increase its public danger. In exceptional cases, the technique of administrative prejudice can be applied in describing a small number of economic, environmental, and some other crimes, the intent to commit which is difficult to prove for objective reasons. The fact of repeated commission of an act prohibited by criminal law will unconditionally indicate the presence of an intentional form of guilt in a person who was previously held liable for a similar offense. In such cases, fundamental doubts about the strictness and fairness of the implementation of criminal liability will be excluded.
Key words: administrative prejudice, techniques and rules of legislative drafting, criminal policy, economic crimes, principle of justice.
Citation. Lapshin V.F. Administrative Prejudice – A Technique of Legislative Drafting in Criminal Law: “Necessary!”, “No!” or “Somehow Like This...”. Legal Concept = Pravovaya paradigma, 2026, vol. 25, no. 1, pp. 25-31. (in Russian). DOI: https://doi.org/10.15688/lc.jvolsu.2026.1.3
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