MOSCOW, August 19 (RAPSI) – Amendments envisaging that term “criminal subculture” needs to be introduced in the law on principles of offence prevention system in Russia has been submitted to the State Duma, according to a document in the database of the lower house of Russia’s Parliament.

The bill is authored by Deputy Chair of the Federation Council Committee on Constitutional Legislation and State Building Alexander Bashkin.

The term is to encompass a system of principles, views, ways of life, and behavior shared by a group of persons informally banding together with an aim to popularize and promote criminal traditions, attributes of the criminal world, as well as to manifest antagonism to law abidance and to justify criminal behavior.

Bashkin notes that crime and offence prevention is a priority of the policy pursued by the Russian Federation; at the same time, criminal societies still have their negative influence across a number of the country’s regions.

The lawmaker believes that especially dangerous are the actions aimed at creating criminal internet communities, which are carried out mainly by convicts, who seek to influence young people by promoting criminal values and inciting hatred towards law enforcers and justices.

The legislation currently in force, Bashkin observes, contains regulations aimed at fight against the propaganda of extremism; however, the propaganda of criminal way of life and criminal ideology remains outside provisions of federal laws; hence the need and feasibility of introduction of respective mechanisms empowering law enforcers to combat this activity, he stresses.

Among the measures the Senator proposes is the banning of websites promoting criminal subculture and internet communities created with the same aims.

The bill has been developed by a decision of the Expert Advisory Committee at the Federation Council Commission on Constitutional Legislation and State Building, the document reads.