Improving the procedural status of a suspect by modernizing the grounds for its occurrence

Abstract

The article analyzes the formation and development of the grounds for introducing a specific person into the status of a suspect. The arguments of the processualists regarding the grounds for its occurrence provided for by the current Code of Criminal Procedure of the Russian Federation, recognized by both the majority of scientists and the author as rather controversial, creating difficulties in law enforcement, are investigated. Attention is focused on the importance of modernizing the grounds for introducing a person into a procedural status that generates personalized criminal prosecution, due to the need to improve the institution of suspicion in modern criminal proceedings. The author uses a historical method to identify the moment of formation and track the development of the grounds for the emergence of the procedural status of a suspect in criminal proceedings of the Soviet and modern periods. It is stated that it is necessary to reduce the grounds for the appearance of the procedural figure of the suspect to a single one, unifying it for all forms of preliminary investigation, implementing the exemption of the decision to introduce a person into the status under investigation from correlation with coercive measures, due to the primacy of suspicion. A special contribution of the author is linking the importance of the priority of suspicion over coercive measures with the complication of the proof process due to the improvement of crime, as well as the number of crimes that oblige their investigation in a form that entails the impossibility of applying a notification of suspicion as a basis that meets the requirements of the priority of suspicion. The novelty of the study consists in a proposal entailing an increase in the procedural significance of the suspect and bringing the provisions of the criminal procedure law in line with modern trends.