Justice or Retribution? How Victim-Side Attorneys Shape Criminal Case Outcomes in Russia

• In Event: Procedural and Courtroom Dynamics and the Sentencing Process 2

Abstract

This study examines the contested role of victim-side attorneys in Russian criminal proceedings, in which victim participation is both a longstanding procedural feature and an underexplored phenomenon. Although international scholarship has highlighted victim legal representation as a means of enhancing procedural fairness and mitigating secondary victimization, few empirical studies have systematically assessed its influence on judicial outcomes. Drawing on Russia’s distinctive dualistic legal environment—recognized for its efficient handling of civil disputes yet marked by a pronounced prosecutorial bias in criminal cases—this research investigates whether victim counsel correlates with more punitive results.
We focus on two principal offense categories, intentional grievous bodily harm (~219,000 cases) and traffic violations (~159,000 cases) causing severe injury or death, supplemented by a subsample of homicide cases. Drawing on large-scale case-level data from 2010 to 2019, we employed multiple regression models to test hypotheses linking the presence of victim counsel to pretrial detention, case dismissal, conditional sentencing, and sentence length. Our approach integrates a range of controls, including defendant characteristics, offense severity, and court-level factors, ensuring that any identified effects are robust, and not merely artifacts of case composition.
Our quantitative analysis demonstrates that the presence of a victim’s lawyer significantly increases the severity of criminal outcomes at each key stage and in all types of cases. These findings underscore the fact that victim representation can substantially shape the trajectory of criminal cases. Beyond confirming the tangible impact of victim attorneys, this study also highlighted the dimension of economic inequality. As Russian law allows victims to fund their own legal representation, those with adequate resources can more readily secure and benefit from professional advocacy. This disparity means that wealthier victims not only enjoy stronger legal support, but can also pursue harsher punishments for defendants, effectively enhancing retributive outcomes.

Authors

• Anton Kazun, HSE University (Moscow)

• Mikhail Belov, UCLA

• Vadim Devyatnikov, HSE University (Moscow)