Considering the Russian Criminal Justice System from the Perspective of System Analysis
Malin P.M. Considering the Russian criminal justice system from the perspective of system analysis. Penitentiary Science, 2025, vol. 19, no. 3 (71), pp. 302–311. doi 10.46741/2686- 9764.2025.71.3.009.
the article considers a system of Russian criminal justice at the level of interdisciplinary connections, i.e. at the junction of various sciences, based on the research of the Tomsk Scientific School for the Study of Problems of System Analysis (not adapted in the works devoted to the Russian criminal justice system). Purpose: to show possibilities of system analysis in relation to criminal proceedings in order to increase its effectiveness and expand possibilities of the theory of criminal procedure law. Methods: dialectical method of cognition of phenomena and processes, method of system analysis, method of analysis and synthesis, formal-logical. Results: the system owns systemic properties, objects and subjects, as well as “input” and “output”. Relying on the system analysis, which determines different levels of systemic properties in the system, the author defines the criminal justice system as a set of stages interconnected by systemic properties (resulting from criminal procedural activities at each stage) These properties embody an object and allow it to be in the system; its movement in the system; its exit from this system. Conclusions: The system analysis has revealed in the system of criminal court proceedings a lack of uniformity in the interpretation of properties of the charge, and, in some cases, its presence (regarding its “binding” to a specific form of preliminary investigation). The mentioned property is set by the legislator extremely superficially and ambiguously, regardless of the volume and result of criminal procedural activity (with the exception of inquiry in short order). As a result, the object is allowed to move to a higher level without achieving specific properties formed in the system. The set of properties cannot be blurred and should provide a clear identification of the object in the system. One or another form of preliminary investigation should be considered as subsystems (as systems) belonging to the system of preliminary investigation, not separated, as the legislator sees it, but united by a single systemic property of the charge with the same substantiating characteristics. In order to eliminate current “non-systemic” practice, it is proposed to amend Part 1.1 of Article 158 of the Criminal Procedure Code of the Russian Federation as follows: “The end of investigation is confirmed for the inquirer by a reasoned conclusion that the suspect has committed a crime; for the investigator by a reasoned conclusion that the accused has committed a crime. The present conclusions indicate the result of the procedural activity in the criminal case, confirm the person’s accusation of the crime committed. They are formulated in the indictment conclusion, indictment act, indictment order from the position of the presence in the criminal case, substantiating these conclusions, indicating the sufficiency of necessary investigative actions and the sufficiency of the volume of evidence collected”. From the above context, as well as from the provisions of Article 446.2 of the Criminal Procedure Code of the Russian Federation, which contradicts systemacity, substantiates the judgment that, without the presence of systemic properties and characteristics (criteria) indicating the properties of an object in the system, it is unacceptable to make a decision on its movement in the system or on its exit from it. We cannot consider a part (stage, subsystem) of the criminal justice system the “formation” (regulated by the norms of the Criminal Procedure Code of the Russian Federation) that is not closed by a systemic property: 1) which implies the absence of the need for a subject of the system to detect and evaluate a systemic property for its belonging to the object; 2) where a subject endowed with the right of systemic influence, establishing the ownership of an object of a new property, does not aim to study systemic properties developed by subjects at previous stages of the system.
Keywords: system, properties; criminal proceedings; system analysis; emergence; subject; object; preliminary investigation.
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