Functioning of inquiry and investigation units in the system of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia

Abstract

This article provides a brief overview of the experience of the functioning of two parallel investigative apparatuses in the system of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia: investigation and inquiry. The author convincingly proves that in the course of the development and improvement of pre-trial proceedings in the country, individual reformers have repeatedly attempted to completely eliminate the inquiry as an independent form of preliminary investigation, which, however, did not happen due to a number of reasons. The article also focuses the attention on the imperfection of the normative legal acts of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation, which, according to its author, need deep scientific understanding and updating against the background of new emerging threats from the criminal world. That is why the place and role of the bodies of inquiry functioning in the system of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation in parallel with the investigative authorities need to be clarified. Discussions on the subject of elimination and preliminary investigation do not cease, and in the context not so much of the creation of a single (non-departmental) investigative committee in its completed form, as in the framework of a strategy focused on the complete deformation (deprocessualization) of pre-trial proceedings in criminal cases as a whole. In any case, the realigners of modern criminal procedure legislation and the practice of its application should bear in mind that such metamorphoses of the stages of initiation of a criminal case and preliminary investigation will inevitably entail the most serious transformations in the judicial stages, for which not only representatives of the executive and judicial branches of the federal government, but also the reformers themselves, are absolutely not ready.