Can the Fight Against Crime Act as a Paradigm for the Legal Model of the Prosecutor's Activity?

Abstract

The prosecutor plays a special role in counteracting crime, being the public officer whom the state made responsible for coordinating the activities of all law enforcement bodies, as well as for the legality and validity of criminal prosecution against persons who committed crimes. Today, alongside the legal model of the prosecutor’s activity provided for in the Criminal Procedure Code of the Russian Federation according to which the prosecutor performs the function of criminal prosecution nominally and is, in fact, removed from the participation in the pre-trial stages of the criminal process, there has also developed a rather autonomous real-life model of the prosecutor’s activities. In practice, the prosecutor still has an opportunity to influence the decisions regarding the initiation of a criminal case and indictment at the stage of preliminary investigation. The study of a prosecutor’s participation in the pre-trial proceedings, a survey of prosecutors, investigators and inquiry offices made it possible to conclude that rights and legal interests of the participants in the process are often sacrificed for the sake of indicators of the effectiveness of criminal prosecution and crime solving rates. The authors analyze the causes of this situation and reveal the drawbacks in the current normative model of the prosecutor’s activity. This analysis allowed them to conclude that there should be no conflict between such determinants of a prosecutor’s activity as counteracting crime and ensuring the rights of the participants of criminal proceedings if the legal model of the prosecutor’s activity is well-considered and carefully drawn. The lawmakers should see their task in finding a reasonable and clear balance between the abovementioned values; the absence of such a balance will inevitably result in a repressive approach to crime counteraction, which is absolutely unacceptable for the modern legal state. The authors describe the factors which, if taken into account, will make it possible to eliminate key problems of the legal model of the prosecutor’s work as well as the distortions and errors in its enforcement. They make a number of suggestions aimed at designing a model of the prosecutor’s activities that would contribute to effective crime counteraction without violations against rights and legal interests of persons in the sphere of criminal proceedings.