Remote Participation of the Victim in the Proceedings at the Stage of Preliminary Investigation

Abstract

The paper deals with the problem of the incompleteness of the legal regulation of remote participation of the victim in pre-trial proceedings, which entails an unreasonable restriction of his rights and legitimate interests. Addition in 2022 to Article 189.1 of the Criminal Procedure Code determined the possibility of interrogation, confrontation and identification through videoconferencing systems. However, to ensure the remote participation of the victim, this seems to be insufficient due to the peculiarities of this procedural status, which consists in the need to comply with the formal grounds for recognizing a person as a victim, which requires the issuance of an appropriate decision and the production of familiarization with it. Accordingly, in order to fully legally ensure the remote participation of the victim, legal regulation of the remote production of the said procedural action is also necessary. It is noted that legal regulation lacks a requirement to establish the possibility for an elderly victim, as well as a victim with physical disabilities to perceive sound and video image electronically transmitted through video conferencing systems, which prevents the exercise of his rights and legitimate interests. This duty of providing such an opportunity should be assigned to the investigator responsible for the criminal. Taking into account the experience of foreign regulation on remote participation, the author substantiates the need to fix in the Criminal Procedure Code of the Russian Federation the basis for a remote regime for conducting investigative actions with the participation of minor victims, aimed at increasing the guarantees of their psychological protection.