Significance of the act of initiation of criminal proceedings: what has changed?

Abstract

The article considers the urgent problems of initiating a criminal case, the regulation of which has undergone significant changes in recent years, which in fact turned the verification of the existence of grounds for the start of the preliminary investigation into its initial stage, which is carried out by procedural means and methods, in connection with which its results have acquired all the signs of admissible evidence. This circumstance requires serious reflection, since it is incompatible either with the general understanding of criminal procedure or with the ideas postulated by classical theory about both evidence and the ways in which they are collected. Changes in the procedure of initiating a criminal case affect not only the entire pre-trial proceedings, but also the essential principles of the criminal process as a whole. As a result of the study, it is substantiated that the activities of the investigation and inquiry bodies, preceding the decision to initiate criminal proceedings, today have all the signs of criminal procedure; the conclusions arising from this statement are formulated, the main of which is the need to revise a number of theoretical postulates and, obviously, criminal procedure legislation.