Problems of Ensuring Access to Justice at the Stage of Initiating a Criminal Case

The purpose of the research. Since the beginning of the 90s. In the 20th century, the Russian Federation set a course towards building a rule-of-law state, which is directly expressed in the tasks of criminal proceedings. The current criminal procedural legislation is, first of all, aimed at protecting the rights and legitimate interests of individuals and organizations who have suffered from crimes, protecting individuals from illegal and unfounded accusations, convictions, and restrictions on their rights and freedoms. But at the same time, already at the stage of initiating a criminal case, a person whose rights have been violated faces a number of difficulties associated with the implementation of a mechanism to ensure access to justice.

Thus, after registering a report of a crime in accordance with Part 1 of Article 144 of the Code of Criminal Procedure of the Russian Federation, the period for verifying the fact stated in the statement begins to count. After the deadline for checking a report of a crime has expired, the authorized official makes a decision to initiate a criminal case or issues a decision to refuse to initiate a criminal case. Most often, the refusal to initiate a criminal case is made unreasonably, without conducting a full and comprehensive study of the circumstances based on the audit material. Which leads to a violation of the rights and legitimate interests of the person against whom this or that illegal act was committed. In addition, at this stage, difficulties arise in appealing an illegal decision of an official, since the Code of Criminal Procedure of the Russian Federation does not contain a rule regulating the procedure for familiarizing the applicant with the inspection materials, which represents a gap in the current legislation and makes it difficult for a potential victim to access justice. This is confirmed by numerous examples from practice. Thus, similar examples are contained: in the Plenum of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation (paragraph 2 of the resolution of February 10, 2009 No. 1 “On the practice of courts considering complaints in accordance with Article 125 of the Code of Criminal Procedure of the Russian Federation”), in the cassation ruling of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation (No. 16-CAD22 -2-K4 dated April 22, 2022), etc.

Without initiating a criminal case, it is difficult to imagine a mechanism to ensure access to justice and the implementation of the right to access to justice. Since when such situations arise, a violation of the provisions of Article 52 of the Constitution of the Russian Federation occurs, which defines the definition of access to justice, which is unacceptable in a rule-of-law state.

Results. An analysis of the problems of access to justice at the stage of initiating a criminal case allowed us to draw a conclusion about the existing shortcomings of the current legislation, which in practice become significant obstacles to the protection of violated rights and legitimate interests through criminal proceedings. The author has put forward proposals to eliminate these shortcomings.