Criminological Profile of Personality of a Professional Criminal:

Code-bound Thief as a Problem of Sustainable Development of

Society

Andrey A. Baybarin

and

Gennady P. Starinov

2 b

Department of Criminal Law, Faculty of Law, Southwest State University, 50 Let Oktyabrya Street 94, Kursk, Russia

Department of Public and Private Law, Faculty of Social and Humanitarian Studies, Komsomolsk-na-Amure State

University, Lenin’s Street 27, Komsomolsk-on-Amur, Russia

Keywords: Organized Crime, Professional Criminal, Criminogenic Environment, Criminal Subculture, Criminal Value

Orientations, Criminal Ideology, Special Subject of Crime.

Abstract: The article analyzes the main criminological characteristics of professional criminals - leaders of the criminal

community. The need to establish the causes and conditions for the emergence and development of criminal

qualities that form the prerequisites for committing a crime determines the analysis of the mechanism of an

individual’s criminal behavior. The works of Kh.A. Asatryan, M.P. Kleymionov, V.M. Anisimov, V.A.

Vladimirov, A.M. Lazarev and others examined the characterization of the personality of a criminal engaged

in organized criminal activity. They examined the spectrum of psychological qualities of a leader’s personality

required for organizing and directing one or another type of criminal activity. They made out the complex of

criminological characteristics of organized crime in business operation. They differentiated the organized

criminals’ composition by nationality. They indicated a problem of the positive perception of the criminal

subculture by young people. In order to counter the negative impact of the criminal "world" on the emerging

personality of a young man, they made some proposals to the current legislation. One can use the research

materials to form a criminological policy of modern society. The author has developed a legislative initiative

to implement it through amendments to the Code of Administrative Violations regarding administrative

offenses that encroach on public order and public safety.

1 INTRODUCTION

According to the “Strategy for Economic Security of

the Russian Federation for the period until 2030”, the

creation of effective criminological tools to prevent a

professional crime at the present stage of

development of our society is one of the strategic

directions for ensuring national security (Consultant

Plus, 2017).

The personality of a criminal is an integral

element of criminological research. The detailed

study of the personality of a criminal is required first

because of the fact that any commission with

elements of a crime largely depends on the

personalization of a particular criminal individual.

https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9183-3101

https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7748-8954

The need to establish the causes and conditions for

the emergence and development of criminal qualities

that form the prerequisites for committing a crime

determines the further analysis of the mechanism of

an individual's criminal behavior.

2 METHODS

The environment exerts a strong influence on the

formation of the initial deviant behavior of a

particular person, which includes:

1) “External environment” formed from the

political, material and spiritual conditions of the

individual;

798

Baybarin, A. and Starinov, G.

Criminological Proﬁle of Personality of a Professional Criminal: Code-bound Thief as a Problem of Sustainable Development of Society.

DOI: 10.5220/0010597807980803

In Proceedings of the International Scientiﬁc and Practical Conference on Sustainable Development of Regional Infrastructure (ISSDRI 2021), pages 798-803

ISBN: 978-989-758-519-7

2) “Internal environment” as a form of immediate

social environment formed by the totality of criminal

elements that promote the ideology of a criminal

image.

The criminogenic environment, which has been

forming in the field of professional criminal activity

throughout the development of our society, has

implemented criminal moral standards, a criminal

subculture, the communications that ultimately

continued to improve the hierarchical criminal

structure, which ultimately negatively affected the

psychology and moral world of a specific individual.

The criminal environment has the greatest impact

on a particular person in places where the criminal

elements are concentrated (prison, pretrial detention

facilities, penal colony settlement) obliging to fulfill

all its requirements under the threat of inevitable

punishment (Kleymionov, 2011).

In our opinion, it seems advisable to consider the

criminological portrait of a professional criminal who

expresses his motivational activity in a categorically

negative attitude to the legal norms and values of our

society.

3 RESULTS

The personality of a professional criminal, the so-

called code-bound thief, contains criminal properties

at all stages of unlawful acts in full contact with

criminal communities that have a negative social

orientation not only in Russia but also abroad.

A huge number of ethnic organized criminal

communities – Georgian, Ingush, Chechen, and

Azerbaijani – are engaged in crimes in Russia. The

criminal activity of the Chinese and Tajik diasporas

is intensifying, ultimately creating a threat to the

national security of our society.

The multinational composition of professional

criminals – code-bound thieves allows concluding

about the international interaction of "criminal world"

(Table 1).

Table 1: The National Composition of Professional

Criminals.

Source: the author compiled the table based on the data

from the site of Prime Crime Information Agency (Prime

Crime-1 IA, 2020).

A diverse range of criminal activities determines

a wide range of psychological qualities of a leader’s

personality, which are necessary to lead various types

of criminal activity.

Typical personality characteristics inherent with

code-bound thieves committing common crimes and

leaders of organized crime groups operating in the

field of criminal business operation differ a little

(Asatryan, 2014). A leader of the criminal

community, organizing crimes in economic activity,

is a highly educated criminal, unconventionally

approached to the search for new opportunities for

criminal business operation.

The business qualities inherent with a

professional criminal - a code-bound thief include:

initiative in making a certain decision; decisiveness in

making high-risk decisions; ability to influence

people used in the criminal business process; high

level of professional training; charismatic abilities

that allow to manage a criminal society.

Criminal professional training of professional

criminals creates the conditions for the preparation

Criminological Proﬁle of Personality of a Professional Criminal: Code-bound Thief as a Problem of Sustainable Development of Society

799

and commission of a crime, using the opportunities

for latent receipt of criminal profit in the process of

committing illegal actions (Samsonov and Sergeev,

2014). They have extensive connections that go far

beyond criminal contacts, including corrupt law

enforcement officials.

A criminal offender connects crimes of a

corruption nature with the deliberate use of his

official authority in order to obtain material and other

advantages, for personal criminal enrichment or for

third parties performing managerial functions in a

commercial or other organization and receiving

illegal remuneration (Onufrienko, 2014).

Such people, having a certain legal status, both in

government and in business, and in business

operation, are usually pragmatic and are striving for

specific criminal results, often using the capabilities

of representatives of the “thieves' world” -

professional criminals (Izvestia, 2018).

The public danger of a corrupt criminal also

comes out in legal discrediting of law through

lobbying of criminal bills and interference in law

enforcement, artificially blocking social projects in

the interests of code-bound thieves.

Professional criminals strive for personal

independence in any circumstances, realizing their

high level through domination in the criminal and

business operational environment.

The most authoritative in the criminal community

leaders of the "criminal world" define the status of a

professional criminal as a code-bound thief at their

gathering.

All the business qualities of a professional

criminal ultimately form the criminal value

orientations and distorted moral foundations of

behavior for direct perpetrators of criminal activity,

and ultimately increase the social danger of a

particular code-bound thief (Kudryavtseva, 2005).

“A large part of the population is involved in this

system and to the point organized crime, controlled

by professional criminals, is an alternative society

with its highly profitable economy, social and

spiritual spheres, its systems of governance, security,

the formation of the young generation, the courts, its

domestic and foreign policies” (Nomokonov, 2010).

Organized crime comes out in the complex of its

criminological characteristics in business operation:

1) The criminalization of economic relations

expressed in the merger of economic and ordinary

criminal activity;

2) The active manifestation of corruption

components, which are a prerequisite, on the one

hand, and one of the manifestations of organized

crime, on the other hand, a means of disguising it;

3) The formation of a reserve of organized

criminal communities from among who serving

criminal sentences in places of deprivation of liberty;

4) The elimination of most forms of social control

because of political instability of society, aggravation

of interethnic, ethnic, religious conflicts;

5) The deformation of the moral position of the

population, affecting the criminal potential;

6) Gaps in the criminal, criminal procedure,

criminal executive and administrative legislation;

7) The weakening of the role of state bodies of

legislative and executive power in the legal regulation

of business operation, in the formation of civilized

market relations.

A specific feature of professional crime is a high

degree of criminal latency that causes enormous

damage to society.

The latency of professional crime is a big social

problem, a detailed study of which allows revealing

of crime statistics close to the truth based on:

1) The real development of methods for the

prevention of crimes in the field of business

operation;

2) Identifying the causes and conditions

conducive to the commission of economic crimes,

and their timely elimination;

3) The implementation of the principle of the

inevitability of punishment for committing unlawful

acts and evening-out the educational impact of

criminal law;

4) The ability to predict economic crime and

develop comprehensive programs for its prevention;

5) Reducing of such a negative phenomenon as

the self-determination of economic crime, that is the

preventive effect on its self-reproduction due to the

growth of recidivism.

An analysis of criminological policy in Russia

allows concluding that the fact that our society allows

professional criminals to manage youth policy

unpunishably and legally in order to prepare for them

a new generation of perpetrators of criminal

intentions also facilitate the spread of criminal

ideology and the strengthening of the positions of

organized criminal groups (TASS, 2016).

In this case, the criminal subculture, being an

integral part of the ideological values of the criminal

community, creates the prerequisites for a negative

impact on the younger generation, which is the basis

for the further development of our society (Vologdina

et al., 2020).

Creating a positive perception of the criminal

lifestyle of professional criminals in the youth

environment makes it possible to legalize the cultural

ISSDRI 2021 - International Scientiﬁc and Practical Conference on Sustainable Development of Regional Infrastructure

800

phenomena studied in criminology as a criminal

subculture (Kleymionov, 2018).

The implementation of distorted value

orientations of youth, based on a positive perception

of the criminal subculture, is gradually becoming an

integral part of the personality of offenders,

displacing elements of legal consciousness

(Anisimkov and Koroliova, 2007).

The low level of social well-being of the

mainstream youth environment allows professional

criminals to stupefy young people with “thieves'

romance”, followed by involving juveniles in

criminal activity (NEWSru.com, 2016).

4 DISCUSSION

The idea of ways to violate the law sequentially

comes to citizens of our society as an inevitable

attribute of business activity. For example, Russian

code-bound thieves legalized the site "Prime Crime",

having registered it as a mass media outlet, all

materials of which are protected by copyright (Prime

Crime-2 Information Agency, 2020).

Public ideologists of the thieves' movement have

gathered a huge amount of material on propagating

the history of the “thieves' world” based on the

formation of an allegedly positive image of criminal

authorities (Beloglazov, 2006).

The imperfection of the legislation and the

inefficiency of the criminological policy of the state

in the sphere of the lawful behavior of an individual

makes the basis for the further spread of criminal

ideology among young people (Tseveleva et.al.,

2020).

5 CONCLUSIONS

In order to negatively perceive the criminal “world”

at the stage of personality formation and counteract

the formation of professional criminal communities,

include the article 20.3.1 in chapter 20 of the Code of

Administrative Offenses of the Russian Federation

(Administrative Offenses encroaching on public

order and public safety). Name it "Advocacy of the

ideology of criminal subculture and the criminal way

of life among juveniles".

«A public demonstration of the symbols of

belonging to the criminal world, the performance of a

song repertoire praising the social significance of the

criminal environment, the public use of slang phrases

of the criminal world, the creation of sites and groups

on social networks with the aim of spreading and

propagating criminal ideology among juveniles».

The proposed legislative initiative will be one of

the forms for the implementation of Federal Law No.

436-FZ dated 12/29/2010 “On the Protection of

Children from Information Harmful to Their Health

and Development”. It will be the form of legal

consolidation of the constitutional principles for the

protection of childhood, proposed for public

discussion by the President of the Russian Federation.

It will be the legal consolidation in normative acts

of the instructions of the President of the Russian

Federation expressed in the Address to the Federal

Assembly on 15.01.2020. It will be the legal basis for

the implementation of Recommendation No. CM /

Rec (2018) 7 of the Cabinet of Ministers of the

Council of Europe “On the observance, protection

and implementation of the rights of children in the

digital environment”, which stipulates the need to

identify the relevant crimes committed in the digital

environment and criminal liability for them

(ConsultantPlus-1, 2019; State Duma, 2020;

President of Russia, 2020; Recommendation, 2018).

Fixing the unlawful ideological activity of the

leaders of the criminal “world” within the framework

of administrative legislation will create legal

prerequisites in the process of subsequent criminal

liability under paragraph 1 of Article 210 of the

Criminal Code of the Russian Federation for

“...occupying a higher position in the criminal

hierarchy”. It will allow the law enforcement

authorities to classify this category of persons as the

“special subject of crime”, since the signs themselves

directly follow from the content of the article,

although not directly indicated in it (ConsultantPlus,

2020; ConsultantPlus-2, 2019).

This will primarily relate to the fact that the

criminalization of criminal policy to increase

responsibility for the creation and leadership of the

criminal community has forced authoritative code-

bound thieves to implement a set of preventive

counteractions aimed at practical imparting to the

conspiracy of a criminal organization.

Their counter-actions include the development of

measures for career-oriented nomination of their legal

representatives in business structures and state

authorities in order to create corrupt schemes.

In particular, summarizing the multifaceted

opinions of specialists regarding the definition of the

status of a special subject, Yu.V. Tarasova (2004)

concretizes the fact that there is no single

understanding on this issue in the theory of criminal

law.

Criminological Proﬁle of Personality of a Professional Criminal: Code-bound Thief as a Problem of Sustainable Development of Society

801

For example, A.M. Lazarev, G.N. Borzenkov

(1981), defines a special subject as the person who

has both common features and additional qualities.

V.A. Vladimirov, G.A. Levitsky (1964)

concretize a special subject as the one who has the

specific features listed in the disposition of the article.

Accordingly, when classifying the characteristics

of a special subject, we propose to take into account

the characteristics of the legal status of the subject

depending on the role that he plays in the commission

of the crime: organizer / leader (DeKeseredy and

Dragiewicz, 2012).

In this case, enumeration for the meaning of the

features of a special subject is as follows:

1) Optional features forming the components of

crime

2) Acting as qualifying features

3) The implication for the individualization of

punishment, aggravating criminal liability.

Controlling common criminal and economic

crime in the course of their criminal activity,

professional criminals participate in criminal

business operations actively, making fabulous profits

from the criminal arms trade, trafficking and sale of

drugs, sale of innards, organizing of the sex-work

sector and the total control of the smuggling of goods

across the border (Gondolf, 2012).

Professional criminals are legal co-founders of a

significant part of the economic sphere of business,

continuing further work on the legalization of capital

acquired by illegal means, trying to take control of the

economy of the city, region, concentrating tax-free

money in the criminal community. It means that they

are the most active participants in the formation of the

“shadow” economies and constitute a real threat to

the national security of the country.

We believe that the knowledge of the personality

of a criminal - the code-bound thief, who, being the

most important link in the entire mechanism of

criminal behavior of criminal communities creates

problems for the stabilization of our society, makes

the base for the effective counteraction against

professional crime.

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