Search for persons who have lost contact with close relatives: retrospective analysis and legal aspects

The article examines the issue related to the lack of a legal basis for the search by Russian law enforcement agencies for persons who have lost contact with close relatives. Attention is focused on the fact that there are currently no regulatory legal acts regulating the procedure for declaring the above-mentioned persons on the federal wanted list, and therefore the function of the police, which implemented it from 1993 to 2018, has become illegitimate in this part. The thesis is made that the absence of clear norms in Russian legislation regulating the procedure for searching for persons who have lost ties is a significant legal gap that has a negative impact on various public relations. At the same time, it is stated that the Russian society feels the need to search for the above-mentioned persons. Within the framework of the study, the categories “missing person” and “person who has lost family ties” were correlated. In retrospect, individual reasons are described that cause both the loss of family ties and the appeal of relatives to law enforcement agencies with statements about the search for loved ones. Statistical data in the area under consideration are studied. The latter were correlated with information about persons who were put on the wanted list as missing persons, and data on the number of operational records opened in connection with the discovery of unidentified corpses. Direct correlations between various indicators in the field of search have been revealed. The overall result of the work was to determine the methods of legal regulation of the activities of competent subjects of public relations in the field of establishing the locations of persons who have lost contact with close relatives.