MOSCOW, December 18 - RAPSI. Supreme Court Chairman Vyacheslav Lebedev has proposed decriminalizing minor crimes stipulating a prison sentence of less than three years.

He added that these crimes should be converted to administrative offenses, including the non-payment of credit to banks and violations of sanitary or fire safety regulations.
"Today, almost everything we do is punishable by law, but why should we all go to court?" he said.

He stressed that general jurisdiction courts consider around 280,000 minor cases annually.

He said these courts closed 230,000 criminal cases in 2012 due to the crime's insignificance. Lebedev said this is his personal opinion, and law enforcement authorities may not assess it positively.