MOSCOW. March 12 (Interfax-AVN) - The Russian law enforcement agencies have so far been unable to bring about qualitative changes to fighting crime in Russia, Prosecutor General Vladimir Ustinov said at a consultative meeting of Russian law enforcement agencies in Moscow on Wednesday.
"The law enforcers have so far been unable to achieve qualitative changes in preventing felonies and heinous crimes. Society and ordinary people have not felt the results of our efforts to fight organized crime, the drug business and the criminalization of the economy," Ustinov said.
According to statistics, the number of recorded crimes went down by nearly 15 percent last year, Ustinov noted. "This circumstance has calmed some and has created the impression that the criminal situation has been stabilized and even that the criminal monster has been knocked down," the prosecutor general said. However, the reality is different, he noted. "Criminal statistics are well known to be tricky and full of zigzags - they more often reflects not the condition of criminality but the practice of fighting it," Ustinov said.
The share of unrecorded, or latent, crimes is still too high, the prosecutor general said, noting that interior agencies hushed up over 116,000 crimes last year. "Despite the sincere desire of the (interior - Interfax-AVN) minister and measures he is taking to put things right, hardly anything is changing," he noted.
The prosecutor general pointed to a decline in the rate of solved crimes, especially regarding heinous crimes like murders. According to his information, 7,158 premeditated murders passed unsolved last year, and nearly 39,000 people have remained missing.
"Before 2000, gradual though slight growth in the detection rate was recorded. In 2001, the detection rate on all kinds of crimes declined to 70% and in 2002 to 62.5%. Hundreds of thousands of criminals evaded justice. This is a factor that not only allows crime to flourish but also forms a specific atmosphere in society that enables crime to overpower the law," Ustinov said.