Criminal Procedure: Issues of Regulating Pre-trial Proceedings

Abstract

Contacting law enforcement agencies is associated with the hope of obtaining protection, restoring violated rights and legitimate interests, and the possibility of exercising the constitutional right to access to justice. Article 6 of the Russian Code of Criminal Procedure fixing the purpose of criminal proceedings, establishes the target areas of criminal procedural activity related to the protection of human rights. The protection of a person and society from criminal encroachments requires a balance of interests between individual, society and the state. How it is better to maintain the balance of these interests in the field? Can we always count on the help of state mechanisms if criminal acts have been committed against us? Are our expectations associated with the justice as a standard of duty that provides protection justified? The procedure of criminal proceedings under current Russian law is built as a system of relatively independent stages of the criminal case movement, assuming their clear sequence. The beginning of criminal proceedings is connected with the stage of initiation of a criminal case. However, its introduction into the stage system as an independent stage gave rise to a discussion about the significance of this stage, its expediency, and its tasks. The importance of the issues of legal regulation of pre-trial proceedings is related to the need to properly ensure the protection of human rights involved in one capacity or another in the criminal process. The research is based on the application of general research methods (systemic, structural and functional); on the use of private scholar methods (historical, statistical, comparative legal ones). The article analyzes the current criminal procedure legislation regulating the commencement of criminal proceedings its comparison with the procedures implemented according to the Statute of Criminal Proceedings of 1864. There is an analysis of the practice of law enforcement, of statistical information, doctrinal publications devoted to the issue. The results of the study are proposals aimed at reforming the institution of pre-trial proceedings. A clear algorithm for the initial stage of criminal procedure proceedings is proposed. The author’s proposals are set out in the third section of the article and in the conclusion.