Promising directions for improving pre-trial proceedings in the Russian criminal process

The subject of the research is the norms of the Criminal Procedure Code of the Russian Federation and the Criminal Procedure Code of the Republic of Kazakhstan that directly or indirectly relate to the procedural status of an individual who is actually subjected to criminal prosecution, with the aim of identifying both the obstacles to the development of pre-trial criminal proceedings and prospective guidelines for such development. In particular, the list of procedural grounds for granting the procedural status of a suspect and the correlation of these grounds with other criminal procedural institutions has been analyzed. Significant obstacles to the improvement of Russian criminal proceedings have been identified in the form of illogical correlation between the institution of suspicion and the institution of measures of criminal procedural coercion, as well as the actual insufficiency of the grounds provided by the current Criminal Procedure Code of the Russian Federation for granting the procedural status of a suspect in the form of pre-trial investigation and the unjustified obligation to present charges to the person subjected to criminal prosecution at the initial stage of the investigation of the crime, which in reality does not guarantee the admissibility of prolonged criminal prosecution of such a person. In the course of the study, the author used a comparative legal method to research the procedural grounds for the emergence of the procedural figure of a suspect in two states, as well as a formal-legal method, the application of which, taking into account static and sociological methods, conducted an analysis of several norms of the current Criminal Procedure Code of the Russian Federation with actual law enforcement. The novelty of the research consists in the proposal that, linking to the concept of the development of the procedural status of a suspect, would allow for the reform of the pre-trial stages of Russian criminal proceedings through changes to the criminal procedural model of its foundation and will lead to a reduction of criminal procedural procedures applied to individuals subjected to criminal prosecution until the transfer of the criminal case to the prosecutor and its submission to the court. Based on the results of the research, directions for improving the pre-trial stages of Russian criminal proceedings have been identified, which have proven effective through the testing of provisions of the new Criminal Procedure Code by law enforcers of the Republic of Kazakhstan. Taking into account the arguments of procedural scholars that allow to correlate the author’s arguments with the opinions of the scientific community and the views of law enforcers, formed in a combined percentage ratio based on the results of a survey, ideas have been proposed that contribute to the development of the Russian pre-trial criminal process.