Forensics in the Educational Process of the Institutions of Higher Education in Ukraine: Historical Aspects

The purpose of the article is to highlight the historical features of the establishment of forensic science in the educational process, the research on the development of forensics in leading Ukrainian higher education institutions. Methodology. In the article a set of scientific methods is used, namely: historical, historiographical, terminological, systemic-structural, formal-logical, comparative legal. Scientific novelty. It was established that after 1917 the teaching of forensics in higher education institutions of Ukraine had some peculiarities: due to the closure of the faculties of law at the universities, the teaching of forensics was discontinued; a teaching of  forensics was introduced in specialized institutions of higher education for police officers, criminal investigators and employees of other bodies who counteracted crimes; a unified approach to the curriculum program, which was approved by the People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs, was adopted to teach forensics at courses and in special schools; a teaching of forensics was restored in the 1930s, after the opening of legal departments and faculties in universities; the forensic training course was taught at the departments of the criminal procedural direction in the postwar years. Conclusions. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in institutions of higher education of Ukraine forensics was primarily taught within the framework of training courses on criminal law, criminal justice proceedings (the procedural order of criminal investigation) and police law. Until 1917, forensics as a complex of auxiliary subjects to criminal law had the status of an optional training course, which, above all things, was offered to students who had intentions to work in the justice agencies, which were investigating crimes. Forensics was taught and mastered by students during various forms of training sessions – practice sessions, seminars in forensic science, audiences, sections. After the end of the Second World War, on the territory of Ukraine a teaching of curriculum on forensics was integrated with the curriculum on criminal procedure. These subjects were provided by the departments of the criminal procedural direction. Since the 1950s and 1960s, domestic law and special law-enforcement institutions of higher education began to create departments of forensic science, which had to ensure the further development of forensics. Keywords: forensics; criminal law; criminal procedure; educational process; institution of higher education; department of forensics; history of forensics.