State Duma permitted Russian regions to introduce curfew

State Duma RF passed the law about curfew, ”INTERFAX” reports.

The deputies passed the law, which permitted Russian regions to introduce curfew for children and teenagers, in the final third reading. The law alters the federal law “The main guarantees of kids’ rights in Russian Federation”.

The law determines that now regional authorities are legally righteous to forbid the persons, aged less than 18, to stay in the streets and public places fr om 10 o’clock in the evening till 6 o’clock in the morning, if these persons are not accompanied by adults. According to the law the persons at the age of less than 18 mustn’t appear in the apartments, meant for sex sales, alcohol sales and other places “able to damage their physical, intellectual, psychic, spiritual and moral development”.

The law presumes that special expert regional committees have the right to determine, where the kids may appear and where they may not. The law allows the regions to lower the age of the persons, for whom the curfew is introduced, but not more than 2 years.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has introduced the bill to State Duma in December 2008. The necessity to pass the law was explained by the statistical data of Russian Ministry of internal affairs. In 2008 such curfews were valid in 15 Russian regions as an experiment. The head of Russian Ministry of internal affairs Rashit Nurgaliev has given the experience of Lipetsk region as an example in December 2008: as a result of the experiment the number of delinquent crimes in the region has reduced 11,6% for 11 months 2008. The number of crimes, committed against delinquents has reduced 59,4%.