Referring to individual media, the statistical data on crimes in 2022, registered in the republic for the first seven months, published by the RA Statistical Service, presented a picture of a general significant increase in crime compared to the same period last year, including a 5-fold increase in the number of murders.

 

Taking into account that such a simple reproduction of purely numerical data of statistics can give a false opinion about the anomalous deterioration in the general state of crime, and therefore about the manageability of the state of crime in the republic, we consider it necessary to clarify the following.

 

 The picture of the quantitative growth of registered cases is due to a number of such new circumstances, which are mainly caused by a change in the methodology of statistics, carried out under the influence of legal norms and the requirements of the new criminal and criminal procedure codes.

 

In particular, in connection with the entry into force of the new Code of Criminal Procedure of the Republic of Armenia, the procedure for resolving obviously criminal cases has changed significantly. The stage of preparation of materials has been completed, and in connection with any such report, on which a documented case can reasonably be given a preliminary legal assessment of compliance with a particular act provided for by the Criminal Code of the Republic of Armenia, a criminal case is initiated and a preliminary investigation is carried out.

 

According to these rules, criminal cases are now being initiated in all situations for which materials were previously prepared.

 

As a result, for example, if earlier materials were prepared and a criminal case was initiated on the fact of obtaining factual information about a violent death, now a criminal case in all these cases is initiated immediately, but no later than within 24 hours, mainly in connection with the case of alleged murder and an investigation is underway.

 

As a justification for the above, we point out that according to the data for the first seven months of 2022, the number of murder cases registered by the RA Police amounted to 163, of which 134 or 82.2% of cases were sudden deaths, and only 29 were such cases that, under the conditions of the previous rules, a criminal case was initiated on the fact of murder.

 

To justify the above-mentioned, it should also be noted that crimes against people increased by 70.6%, especially grave crimes by 163 or 90.6% /180-343/. In fact, only 134 or 82.2% of the increase in 163 cases of especially serious crimes are sudden death cases in which a murder case has been initiated.

 

Thus, compared to the same period last year, the number of supposedly real murders decreased by 4 or 12.1%. The number of cases of attempted murder also decreased by 5 or 17.2% /29-24/, as stated in the message of the RA Prosecutor General's Office on August 30, 2022.

 

In addition, from August 30, 2021, a new type of crime was added to the former Criminal Code of the Republic of Armenia under Article 137.1, which significantly affected the numerical indicators reflecting the state of crime.

 

In particular, the number of cases recorded under this article in the first seven months of 2022 amounted to 1,160, while in the first seven months of 2021, similar acts that exist in objective reality were not actually criminalized.

 

In support of the foregoing, we state that due to this type of crime, cases of crimes against people also became more frequent: the increase was 1562 or 70.6% /2211-3773/, of which 30.7% were cases provided for in Article 137.1 of the Criminal Code adopted in 2003.

 

In other words, there were no significant changes or deviations in the course of committing crimes that could affect the manageability of crime and the general state of the legal system.