On the lack of powers of the prosecutor in modern pre-trial criminal proceedings

The article expresses the author’s position on the insufficiency of the power and administrative powers of the prosecutor in modern pre-trial criminal proceedings. Despite the fact that the prosecutor is included in the number of his participants on the part of the prosecution, it is difficult to ensure the establishment of the circumstances of the crime by the legal means provided to him when his signs are detected, as well as the identification and exposure of the person or persons who committed it. This has been repeatedly addressed and continues to be addressed by many legal scholars. Nevertheless, the situation remains at that level, which is established by Federal Law No. 87-FZ of 05.06.2007, who made significant and not entirely explicable changes to the Criminal Procedure Code of the Russian Federation in terms of limiting the supervisory powers of the prosecutor at the initial and subsequent stages of pre-trial proceedings. The individual powers currently used by prosecutors are analyzed in the article in their comparison with those established by the USSR Law of 30.11.1979 “On the Prosecutor’s Office of the USSR”, as well as the Criminal Procedure Code of the Russian Federation in its original version. At the same time, attention is drawn to the obvious imbalance of powers to supervise the procedural activities of the preliminary investigation bodies and the bodies of inquiry, which is noted by both practitioners and legal scholars, as well as representatives of civil society institutions. It is also obvious that certain provisions of the Criminal Procedure Code of the Russian Federation do not correspond to the basic provisions of the Federal Law “On the Prosecutor’s Office of the Russian Federation”, the declarative nature of a number of norms of the Criminal Procedure Code of the Russian Federation on the role of the prosecutor in pre-trial proceedings. Doubts are expressed about the validity of the exclusion from it of the prosecutor’s right to give binding instructions to the preliminary investigation bodies. The article expresses the opinion on the expediency of returning to the prosecutor the right to conduct inspections on reports of crimes of certain categories, as well as the initiation of criminal cases based on their results, as well as on the results of studying the materials of pre-investigation inspections, on which decisions were made to refuse to initiate criminal cases, if the prosecutor comes to the conclusion that there are sufficient grounds for this. In this regard, the author considers it necessary to significantly reform the modern institution of prosecutorial supervision in pre-trial proceedings. To do this, it is necessary not only to amend Article 37 of the Code of Criminal Procedure of the Russian Federation, but first of all – the inclusion of the main supervisory powers of the prosecutor in this area in the Federal Law “On the Prosecutor’s Office of the Russian Federation”, establishing its priority over the norms of the Code of Criminal Procedure of the Russian Federation.