MOSCOW. Feb 11 (Interfax-AVN) - President Vladimir Putin has urged law enforcement agencies to guarantee that the punishment of criminals be unavoidable.
At an expanded session of the Prosecutor General's Office in Monday, he spoke against tightening legislation or the introduction of the death penalty. "What sense there is in tightening punishment, if the law enforcement system cannot guarantee that punishment is unavoidable?" he said.
Putin said that over 7,000 murderers "escaped justice last year alone." In addition, hundreds of thousands of criminals are at large, he said.
"Law enforcement bodies fail to establish the whereabouts of over 30,000 missing persons annually," he said. "If you compare that with the losses in the Caucasus, the figure is 10 times larger," he stressed.