Ensuring the Rights of Minors in Criminal Proceedings under the Legislation of Certain Foreign Countries

Abstract

The paper analyzes the procedural status, as well as the specifics of the legal regulation of the participation of minors in the criminal procedure of the Republic of Azerbaijan, the Republic of Kazakhstan, the Republic of Belarus, the Kyrgyz Republic, the Republic of Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, the Republic of Armenia, Afghanistan, and the Swiss Confederation. The authors analyze the legislatively defined concept of a minor participant in criminal proceedings, the institution of representation, as well as the availability of additional procedural guarantees provided for by criminal procedure legislation. The study found that the period of detention of a minor suspected of committing a crime is not equal to 48 hours in all countries. In particular, the criminal procedure legislation of the Republic of Kazakhstan and the Kyrgyz Republic regulates the detention of this category of persons for a period of no more than 24 hours, which is regarded by the authors as an additional guarantee of the state aimed at protecting the psycho-emotional state of minors during criminal proceedings. The peculiarities of the production of investigative actions involving this category of persons, the peculiarities of their representation, as well as the involvement of a teacher, psychologist and doctor in criminal procedural relations are revealed. The authors recognize the Kazakh model of criminal procedure as an enhanced version of representation, which provides for mandatory representation of minor victims, civil plaintiffs and private prosecutors by both a legal representative and a representative, which can be either a lawyer or another person. The study made it possible to form a generalized idea of the rights and obligations of juvenile participants in criminal proceedings implementing various criminal procedural functions, as well as to express the author’s position on the possibility of introducing into the Russian criminal procedural space the most successful practice of legal regulation of ensuring the rights of minors in criminal proceedings, identified in foreign legislation.