More than half of Russians support lowering the age of criminal responsibility for serious offences, despite acknowledging that family breakdown and poor upbringing are the main drivers of youth crime.
Support for reducing the threshold from 14 to 12 has reached 53%, according to September polling reported by Russian media on 23 September 2026. The proposal mirrors the punitive campaign led by Alexander Bastrykin, head of Russia’s Investigative Committee, who has argued that the criminal justice system should intervene at an earlier age.
The findings, reported by the Russian Telegram channel Chestno i Tochka, point to a widening appetite for punishment even as the country’s own figures show that youth crime has fallen sharply. Russian law currently sets the general age of criminal responsibility at 16, while liability for certain serious offences – including murder, rape, theft and terrorism – begins at 14.
A punitive answer to a social problem
Bastrykin’s initiative presents earlier criminal liability as a response to the supposed early maturation of children. In practice, it would legitimise a more repressive approach to dealing with so-called difficult teenagers, shifting responsibility from families and public institutions on to children themselves.
The survey results expose that contradiction. Between 51% and 52% of respondents identified destructive family influence and a lack of parental upbringing as the principal causes of juvenile offending. A further 28% pointed to psychological immaturity, while 21% cited the absence of worthwhile leisure, interests and prospects.
Those answers describe a failure of the environment surrounding a child, rather than evidence that 12-year-olds should be treated as fully responsible adults. Yet only 20% of respondents believed that a 12-year-old was capable of understanding the consequences of their actions. The gap between that assessment and support for criminal liability at the same age suggests that punishment is being favoured even where the public recognises children’s limited maturity.
Crime has fallen despite the demand for tougher measures
The push for a lower age threshold also runs against the long-term trend in juvenile crime. The number of offences recorded in Russia fell from 225,000 in 1993 to 26,000 in 2024 – a reduction of almost nine times over three decades.
Nevertheless, 36% of citizens believe the situation is deteriorating and call for tougher penalties, viewing them as a way to combat what they describe as permissiveness and inadequate discipline. The figures suggest that the demand for harsher treatment is not being driven by a straightforward rise in recorded youth crime. It has instead taken shape amid the continuing SVO, where coercive responses have gained greater social legitimacy.
Lowering the threshold would allow the authorities to address juvenile offending through the simplest mechanism available to the state: isolating the child. It would require fewer resources than sustained work with troubled families, schools and local communities, or programmes designed to rehabilitate and reintegrate young offenders.
Support for rehabilitation is being sidelined
There is a significant counter-current in the same public mood. Overall, 72% of respondents, rising to 82% among younger people, believe that teenagers who have committed serious offences can be reformed and returned to society.
That belief points to a substantial humanitarian potential in Russian society. But it is being weakened by political initiatives that treat early criminalisation as the answer to problems which respondents themselves associate with family dysfunction, immaturity and a lack of constructive activity.
The central danger is that criminal punishment ceases to be a last resort and becomes a substitute for prevention. Once the state expands its ability to prosecute children, it can avoid the slower and more expensive task of repairing the conditions that contributed to their behaviour. Children exposed to a punitive system may be isolated rather than helped, with the risk that the institutions intended to correct offending instead deepen exclusion and future criminality.
Bastrykin’s proposal therefore marks more than a technical change to the age of responsibility. It shows that Russia’s authorities are prepared to extend the reach of the penal system into ever-earlier childhood rather than wait for reforms in parenting, education, social support and rehabilitation.
Should Russia prioritise family and social support over lowering the age of criminal responsibility?
