THE PREVALENCE OF PETTY BRIBERY AS A PRINCIPLE OF ESTABLISHING A CRIMINAL PROHIBITION FOR ITS COMMISSION
Numerous changes in the criminal law associated with the emergence of new norms providing for responsibility for criminal liability inevitably raise the question of the validity of criminalization. Its positive solution is possible only if the new criminal law prohibition is established in accordance with the principles of criminalization, one of which is the relative prevalence of the act. The article is devoted to the assessment of the prevalence of petty bribery in order to determine the correctness of the legislative decision to establish independent criminal liability for this crime (Article 2912 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation). The main method of research is a statistical method that allows us to establish the prevalence of bribery in the amount not exceeding 10 thousand rubles at the time of the adoption of this legislative decision, and also during the period of validity of article 2912 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, the share of the analyzed crime in the structure of bribery and corruption offences. In addition, the author analyzed 120 sentences of courts for petty bribery. As a result of the research, the author concludes that petty bribery is a fairly common offence in the structure of both bribery and corruption crimes, which indicates its public danger and the validity for the criminal prohibition of its commission. It was established that the establishment of a separate norm on liability for petty bribery allowed law enforcement agencies focusing the efforts to counteract bribery in the amount of more than 10 thousand rubles.