“Justice must be cruel”: the Prosecutor General proposed to increase the responsibility of murderers and child rapists

Prosecutor General Ruslan Kravchenko stated that those involved in committing particularly serious crimes against children should receive only the harshest punishment — life imprisonment.

He wrote about this on social media.

“For particularly serious crimes against children, only life imprisonment. No compromises. Today I addressed the Verkhovna Rada Committee on Law Enforcement with a proposal to strengthen criminal liability for those who take the lives of or rape children,” the message says.

The Prosecutor General noted that currently, for the murder of a child, criminals can receive the maximum sentence — 15 years in prison and a chance for early release.

“In my opinion, this is unfair. And here the question is rhetorical: can any sentence be fair when a child’s life, their right to grow up, to achieve something in life, was taken away,” Kravchenko added.

He emphasized that it is not about severity, but about justice and safety: when a criminal knows that he can receive a life sentence, this can be a deterrent.

The official recalled a number of cases in which prosecutors defended life imprisonment for the perpetrators:

• The murder of Maxim Materukhin on the capital’s funicular;
• A case of crimes against the sexual freedom of a minor by a 41-year-old man in the Kharkiv region;
• In Dnipro, a 44-year-old defendant was found guilty of raping and corrupting three minors;
• The case of the murder of a minor child and the commission of sexual violence in the Dnipropetrovsk region.

According to Kravchenko, over the past 19 months, 67 children have been victims of intentional murder; 531 children have suffered sexual violence, 360 of them under the age of 14.

“Justice should be tough, and punishment should be commensurate with the crime. I ask the people’s deputies to support the initiative of the Prosecutor General’s Office and make amendments to the legislation of Ukraine. A murderer or rapist should no longer count on leniency or loopholes in the law,” he concluded.

Earlier, the Shevchenkivskyi District Court of Kyiv sentenced the defendant in the case of the murder of teenager Maksym Materukhin at the funicular station.

Also follow “Pryamim” on Facebook , Twitter , Telegram , and Instagram.