Korsakov Konstantin
Abstract: The article is devoted to the criminological doctrine, namely, religious approach to the phenomenon of crime and criminal punishment, which resulted from the massive spread of the Christian monotheistic doctrine and transforming religion into universal form of social control. The author shows that religious approach towards crime and criminal punishment, which replaced the rule of the talion and compensatory logic of blood feud established in penal practice, is aimed on the inward spiritual rebirth of the offender. Therefore, it involves clarification and comprehension of the motivations and causes of criminal behavior, as well as goal setting, guilt and mental processes of the offender, which previously were not taken into account by the enforces. The emergence of this concept was an important milestone in the history of the practice of the enforcement of criminal punishment, as well as in the criminological theory. It marked the transition to the assessment of objective characteristics of the criminal act in the interrelation with its subjective characteristics: fault, intent, motives, and goals. The author highlights that the doctrine of repentance has rather wide range of means and methods of the influence over the person who has committed crime. The main ones are the sincere recognition of his/her sinfulness, the inadmissibility of criminal behavior, and the desire to expiate the guilt actively. The article describes characteristic feature of such theological criminological approach as the demonic possession. In the enforcement practice, it appears in the elimination of distinction between criminal act and the intention to commit criminal act. The author shows that the concept of repentance was gradually replaced by classical criminological theory and positivistic tradition due to the secularization of public life.
Keywords: criminological doctrine; penology; criminal punishment; talion; blood feud; response to crime; criminal responsibility; repentance; penal practice.