President Vladimir Putin recently urged the nation to take two things more seriously - fitness and the threat of crime. One might be reserved about the first suggestion, considering that it followed suspiciously hot on the heels of TV6´s former channel suddenly being filled with sports programming. The second exhortation, on the other hand, is certainly called for.

The mixed bag of blessings that was the fall of the Soviet Union brought, among other things, a huge upsurge in street crime, especially of a violent sort. The heyday of the Mafia may be over, but that, as everyone in Russia knows, by no means indicates that the streets - or even people´s homes - have gotten safer. Moreover, a staggeringly high number of cases remain unsolved - 884,000 out of 2.9 million, many of them serious - and their perpetrators remain on the street.

This is not because Russian criminals are unusually wily or well-equipped. In large part, it is due to the corruption and partiality that bedevil law-enforcement agencies and the judicial system. The Russian legal system, from the lowliest cop on the beat to judges in the highest courts, is geared as much to earning a quick buck and enforcing the will of those on high as it is with enforcing the letter of the law or even protecting the populace.

Putin was right in saying that simply re-instituting the death penalty or other such harsh - and irreversible - measures will accomplish nothing except, more likely than not, sending numbers of innocent people to an early grave. Instead, as the president stated, what is needed is a thoroughgoing and serious overhaul of the law-enforcement system. One only hopes that he is serious.