Russia issues get-out-of-jail-free card

The slow erosion of the rule of law could undermine public faith in the state.

Imagine a loved one brutally murdered.

Imagine finding out that the murderer will not only not be punished for their crime, but will instead be sent away and offered the chance to become a hero.

Imagine finding out that they’d done it all before.

Would you have faith in the police that are supposed to protect you? Would you leave justice in their hands, knowing they were are powerless and indifferent? Would you support the politicians who allowed this to happen?

That is the situation that Russians who are victims of crimes are increasingly faced with.

Since the start of Russia’s war on Ukraine, there has been a slow erosion of certain key aspects of the law.

First, there were pardons for those convicted — typically of the most violent crimes — so that they could join private military company (PMC) Wagner on the frontlines.

Then came the routine acceptance by courts of participation in the war on Ukraine as a mitigating circumstance in sentencing for subsequent crimes. Including for those who were pardoned and then returned to their old homes to carry out new crimes. Plus, quite often, a chance to return to the frontlines through another pardon.

Now, Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed into law amendments that allow those facing criminal charges to sign a contract with the Ministry of Defence and go to fight instead of going to court.

The law offers a kind of get-out-of-jail free card, exempting suspects from criminal liability and providing a fast-track from detention centres to combat units.

For the guilty, it means no formal acknowledgement of their crimes, no record of a conviction subsequently quashed.

For the innocent, it will arguably make it easier to pressure people to join the military, rather than spend months in detention (think of the way that the perverse incentives of the US plea-bargain system lead innocent people to plead guilty as a starting point).

For the victims of crime and their families, it means that, even if the person who brutally murdered your loved one is found, there is no guarantee that they will face punishment.

To be clear, there will be no immediate consequences for this. Russia will not collapse. Civil war will not erupt. People will not head to the streets to protests en masse.

Yet it is easy to imagine that this will have a long-term corrosive effect on people’s confidence in the rule of law and the state.

Although people may be cynical, both of these do exist to a degree. Prominent legal scholar Kathryn Hendley argues that Russia has a dual legal system: where elite interests are involved, those interests take precedence over the law but, where elite interests are absent, the letter of the law actually matters. In the latter case, people have at least some expectation that crimes will be investigated and punished.

It is these expectations that will increasingly not be met. And it is this kind of situation that – for reasons of psychology – is more likely to cut through media narratives and undermine support for the authorities than bodies arriving home. This, in turn, will slowly erode people's confidence in the system.

We cannot reliably predict all of the social consequences of the war in Ukraine. We do not have an accurate measure of how the war has affected recidivism rates and levels of brutality among those who return from fighting.

But it seems reasonable to presume that the war Russia has started will have enduring social consequences, and that it will take years to recover from them.