The Object of Russian Criminology

The authors analyze the content of the object of criminology, which includes criminality, criminalization of actions, decriminalization of actions, the personality of the criminal, determinants of crime, criminological prevention of crime. They support the definition of criminality according to which it is a social (socially dangerous, relatively mass, historically changing) and criminal law phenomenon that includes a system-forming aggregate of crimes and persons who have committed them in a certain territory within a certain period of time. The authors believe that the object of criminology should include the criminological conditionality of the existence or the change of the criminal law prohibition, while the object of the science of criminal law should include the social conditionality of establishing the criminal law prohibition as well as the legislative methodology of criminalizing and decriminalizing actions. It is stated in the article that the best approach to the personality of the criminal views this personality as an aggregate of social, biological and psychological qualities of the person who has committed a crime. The authors stress that the existence of criminality should be explained from deterministic positions which make it possible to show the diverse influence of many social phenomena on criminality. Criminality originates from its causes as a natural consequence, the conditions form or contribute to the emergence of the causes of crime, the factors create a certain favorable background for the existence of criminality. The authors describe changes in the action mechanism of general social determinants of crime under the influence of globalization. They begin to exercise their negative influence on a person not through small social groups in which socialization takes place, but directly, especially though the Internet. The authors state that the object of criminology is the criminological prevention of crime in the form of coercion not connected with the implementation of criminal law measures, as well as in the form of protecting the rights and lawful interests of a person and providing social and legal support.