The Ministry of justice proposed to raise the thresholds of major theft for the first time in 23 years

The Ministry of Justice proposed to raise the thresholds for large and especially large theft from 250 thousand to 1.5 million rubles and from 1 million to 6 million rubles, respectively. The current criteria, many of which have not been revised for more than 20 years, do not correspond to changed economic conditions and lead to criminal prosecution for acts that do not pose a great public danger. This was stated by the Director of the Department of criminal and administrative legislation of the Ministry of justice Maria Jouse-Ivanina at a round table in the Federation Council.

As an example, she cited the case of a man who in 2025 cut down two spruces and two aspens, causing damage to 6 thousand rubles. He was brought to criminal responsibility, and the conviction withstood in the appeal and cassation instances. Only the Supreme Court pointed out that the act did not pose sufficient public danger to be considered a crime. In another case, a criminal case was opened against a woman who in 2021 left the store without paying for a purchase of 3,642 rubles. She offered to immediately pay for the goods, but only the Supreme Court dismissed the case, pointing to the absence of corpus delicti.

According to the Ministry of Justice, the accumulated inflation for a number of compositions exceeded 400%, while many of the dimensions established by the Criminal Code have not changed for more than ten years. In particular, the thresholds of large and especially large-scale theft, provided for by Art. 158 CC, not adjusted since 2003. Taking into account inflation, they should be increased respectively to 1.5 million and 6 million rubles, said Jouse-Ivanina. At the same time, she stressed that inflation alone is not enough to automatically revise the criteria: it is necessary to take into account the public danger of acts and the position of law enforcement agencies.

The Ministry of Justice believes that previous legislative changes confirm the possibility of such an adjustment without an increase in crime. In 2024, the threshold values for damage to fraud in the field of business activity were increased from 10 thousand to 250 thousand rubles. As a result, 28% of crimes in this category became administrative offenses. According to Jouse-Ivanina, fears about the growth of crime after the change in the legislation were not justified.

The representative of the Ministry of Justice also supported the initiative of the Ministry of Internal Affairs to increase the threshold for petty theft from the current 2.5 thousand to 5 thousand rubles, and significant damage caused to a citizen to 10 thousand rubles. Now repeated petty theft can entail criminal liability, including imprisonment for up to one year. Jouse-Ivanina noted that the consequences of such an offense and the costs of the state for investigation and trial are not always correlated with its public danger.

A proposal to raise the threshold for damage was sent to agencies, most of which expressed conceptual support.

The Chamber of Lawyers proposed to increase to 10 million

Vice-President of the Federal Chamber of Lawyers Nver Gasparyan during the event proposed to increase the threshold of a particularly large amount of theft and bribery from 1 million to 10 million rubles. He noted that the current values were set in 2003, when the average salary in Russia was about 5.5 thousand rubles, and now exceeds 100 thousand rubles. According to him, the income of the population during this time increased by about 20 times, while the cost criteria of the criminal law remained the same.

“In other words, four months of such work is a particularly large amount. How come? Can it be considered a particularly large size that you can earn in a few months? — said Gasparyan, speaking about the earnings of drivers of Moscow transport and couriers, who, according to him, can receive 200-250 thousand rubles a month. Counsel believes that maintaining the previous thresholds leads to the imposition of penalties that do not correspond to the gravity of the offense. At the same time, their increase, in his opinion, will not entail decriminalization: in some cases, only the qualification of the crime will change.

The Prosecutor General’s Office defended the existing thresholds for bribery

With such a statement of the issue in relation to bribery, the Prosecutor General’s Office is not ready to agree, it followed from the words of the representative of the department Irina Pozdnyakova, the proposal to increase the threshold of damage for theft she did not comment. Pozdnyakova said that the grounds for reviewing the existing criteria of large and especially large size are not enough. So, according to her, the average size of the bribe in 2024-2026 was in the region of 1 million rubles, while in 2017 it was about 2 million rubles, and in 2018 – 1.3 million rubles. These data, according to the representative of the supervisory authority, do not indicate a multiple increase in amounts and do not allow to justify a change in thresholds.

Pozdnyakova noted that the number of registered corruption crimes continues to grow. If in 2018-2020 about 30 thousand such acts were registered annually, then in 2025 their number exceeded 43 thousand. In the first nine months of 2026, the indicator increased by another 2.5%. More than 62% of corruption crimes account for bribery, said Pozdnyakova. The share of detected crimes in this category in large and especially large sizes increased from 19% in 2017 to 32.5% currently. At the same time, the share of small bribery decreased from 48% to slightly more than 10%.

The change in the structure of the identified crimes in the Prosecutor General’s Office is associated, among other things, with a change in the priorities of law enforcement agencies. Now their attention is focused on corruption in the military-industrial complex and in the implementation of national projects, explained Pozdnyakova. She recalled that the statistics on the registration of such acts did not give a complete picture of their prevalence. Bribery is characterized by high latency, and crimes in large and especially large sizes are detected mainly in large regions and cities of federal significance. Therefore, according to the representative of the Prosecutor’s office, when reviewing thresholds, it is necessary to take into account differences in the economic situation of the subjects of the country.