Russian President Vladimir Putin gave Russia's state...

Russian President Vladimir Putin gave Russia's state prosecutors a tongue-lashing for allowing thousands of violent criminals to walk free and told them to improve the conviction rate for serious crimes.
"What's the sense of toughening punishment if the law-enforcement system cannot make the punishment inevitable," Putin said.
But with a public debate heating up over the future of the death penalty, he repeated he was in favour of scrapping capital punishment - a move that would bring Russia in line with the European mainstream.
Putin, who has made Russia's integration into European institutions a priority, clearly had an eye on a parliamentary debate in March which should decide whether to make good on Russia's pledges to the Council of Europe to scrap capital punishment.