PROSPECTS FOR PRELIMINARY INVESTIGATION AS AN EVALUATIVE CATEGORY CHARACTERIZING THE INVESTIGATOR’S CRIME DETECTION ACTIVITY

Abstract

The issue of prospects for investigating a specific unlawful event involves a complex set of tasks that an investigator must address on an urgent basis, even before a decision is made to initiate criminal proceedings. These include: identifying information indicating elements of a crime; establishing the circumstances of the committed act; and determining the involvement of relevant persons. Knowledge of investigation prospects allows for the determination of both the general strategy for understanding a criminal event and the tactics of individual procedural actions. The quality of the investigation plan, and consequently the quality of the results obtained by the investigator throughout the entire evidentiary process, depends on this knowledge. The purpose of the research presented in this article is to develop a methodological approach to the criminal investigation process as a dialectically consistent sequence of actions aimed at establishing the truth. The methodological framework of the study is based on general scientific and specialized (criminalistic) methods. The former include dialectical materialism (which provided an understanding of criminal investigation as a process of resolving cognitive contradictions), scientific systematization (used as a means of grouping factors influencing the course of an investigation), as well as analysis and synthesis, deduction and induction (which allowed for the decomposition of investigative practice into components, the identification of causal relationships, and the construction of a logical progression from the detection of evidence of a crime to the formulation of charges). The latter include modeling of criminal situations (which served as a basis for developing a predictive model of investigation prospects), criminalistic situational analysis (used to determine the optimal sequence of investigative actions), and the system-activity approach (which predetermined the conceptualization of investigation as a collective managerial function aimed at optimizing procedural decisions). Results: the study formulates a definition of the term “investigation prospects” and establishes its relationship with fundamental categories of criminalistics; it also examines connections between “investigation prospects” and the conduct of criminal investigation, its planning, tactics, and forecasting.