Interethnic Relations: Organizational and Forensic Aspects of Modern Criminal Policy

The authors analyze legal regulation of interethnic relations in the sphere of criminal law and the problems of implementing legal norms in modern law enforcement activities. It is noted that the condition of interethnic relations in a multinational country determines a substantial part of the migration policy and has a great influence on the economic, political and criminogenic situation. The authors describe the modern condition of interethnic relations in the Russian Federation, trace the historical connection with the national question in the Russian Empire and the USSR, analyze the State Strategy of National Policy of the Russian Federation till 2025 approved by the Decree of the RF President of December 19, 2012 № 1666. It is shown that Russian legal regulation of interethnic relations lacks a unified framework of concepts and categories; for example, there are no clear boundaries between the concepts «ethnic», «national», «racial» and their derived categories. All of them are used in a chaotic manner with different mutual correlations. The article describes the contents of the compared concepts, determines their converging and differentiating features. The fundamental difference in the understanding of the concept of «national» in Russian and foreign legislation and law enforcement is stressed. The authors prove the necessity to unify terminology, bring examples from Russian court practice and the position of the European Court of Human Rights, establish the criminalistic significance of ethnic information. It is suggested that the specific framework of concepts and categories should be the basis for the development of practical instruments for using ethnic information about the participants of a crime event — a mechanism of practical implementation of the legal regulation of interethnic relations, and for determinig its goals, tasks, and key directions of work. Besides, the authors examine modern social interethnic situation in the area of identifying, investigating and detecting crimes.