Asocial, negative, criminal behavior of young people and adolescents always attracts close attention of the society and the state. It is the effectiveness of preventive work in this sphere that greatly influences the condition and structure of crime in general, the feelings of security and protection in society as a whole, as well as in specific social groups or individuals. Taking into account numerous doctrinal approaches that deal with individual types of crime - juvenile crime, youth crime - it is suggested that they should be viewed in a certain synergetic unity. The author presents his own definition of juvenile and youth crime and studies the distinctive criteria of this type of crime through the analysis of age-specific features of juveniles and young people. Special attention is paid to examining the process and results of socialization for young people aged 14-24. Having studied the social role characteristics of juveniles and young people, the author concludes that there are certain similarities in their dominant role activity. Attention is focused on the specifics of criminal law liability of minors, which to some extent spreads to persons over 18 years of age. The analysis of some acts of international law of universal character allowed the author to conclude that they often synthesize many of the studied categories: "minor", "youth", "young people". The international community pays special attention to the necessity of improving family wellbeing, education, state and social protection of adolescents and young people. It is concluded that international law norms act as a certain starting point for constructing and implementing the national policy of preventing juvenile and youth crime.
The article presents research materials on preventing the spread of extremist ideology in places of detention from the standpoint of a differentiated approach. The relevance of this topic is connected with the modern criminal trends, including the activities of various subjects aimed at committing crimes against the foundations of the constitutional order and the security of the state, and the increased concentration of persons convicted for extremist crimes in places of detention. The goal of this research is to develop recommendations for preventing the spread of extremist ideology, and the crimes of this type, in places of confinement, while using a differentiated approach. The author presents statistical data on extremist crimes registered in the Russian Federation between 2019 and 2024, as well as the information about the number of persons convicted for committing such crimes and kept in correctional institutions between 2019 and 2024, and their specific weight compared to the total number of incarcerated convicts. A special concept of counter-narrative and counter-propaganda is presented, which is characterized, firstly, by counteraction to the propaganda of extremist ideology with the purpose of unmasking the ideas of extremists and thus refuting the extremist ideology; secondly, by the application of a complex of measures aimed at the prevention and counteraction to extremist propaganda with the purpose of neutralizing, weakening or refuting the propositions of extremist ideology in places of detention. As a result of conducted research, the author formulated a number of recommendations on preventing the spread of extremist ideology in places of detention through the use of a differentiated approach, and presented arguments for the feasibility of using educational, regime, and operative-search measures.
This article examines the terminological distinction between the concepts of "system" and "structure" as applied to forensic support for crime detection and investigation. It is noted that the extensive use of this category in modern forensic science is accompanied by diverse interpretations of its content, as well as a confusion of its systemic and structural characteristics. This leads either to their actual interchangeability or to an artificial separation of elements within a single whole, reducing the methodological certainty of subsequent research. Based on the analysis of scientific approaches to forensic support, principles of scientific methodology, systems theory, and dictionary definitions, the need for their distinct yet interconnected application is substantiated. It is demonstrated that understanding the system and structure of forensic support depends on the original approach to the category being studied: systemic, activity-based, or general methodological. Particular importance is attached to the fact that a broad use of the term "forensic support" should not replace traditional forensic constructs, including forensic techniques, tactics, and investigative methods. It is concluded that the forensic support system characterizes its composition, functional limits, and external integrity, while the structure reveals the internal organization, hierarchy, and stable relationships of the corresponding elements. In this sense, the system defines forensic support "horizontally", while the structure defines it "vertically". This approach is important not only for the theory, but also for the correct development of practice-oriented forensic recommendations. The simultaneous use of these concepts allows for a more precise description of forensic support as a holistic scientific and practical category while maintaining the terminological rigor of the language of forensic science.
The paper attempts to analyze the modern legal regulation of the labor of convicts serving custodial sentences. The lawmakers defined labor as a main means of correction, and the results of employing this means have a great significance. The authors study the modern condition of the mechanism of involving convicts in labor, as well as the possibilities for the convicts to perform work and provide services. The role of labor in the system of preventive activities aimed at convicts is described. Different opinions are analyzed, and the authors' own position regarding this problem is presented. The enforcement of the punishment of a custodial sentence is rather costly, and the authors point out that the labor of convicts is necessary in order to compensate for some of the expenses incurred by their incarceration. The legal, social and moral grounds of convicts' labor are examined. The authors study the types of work performed by convicts serving custodial sentences, and give their own assessment of the effectiveness of convicts' labor. They also present suggestions on other types of work that could be done by convicts in custody, and point out those that could not be done by convicts due to normative restrictions. It is suggested that the potential of labor influence should be widened by involvement in intellectual work, especially in view of the historical experience. The causes of low efficiency of labor performed by convicts with custodial sentences are identified. It is noted that one of such causes is the fact that most convicts perform work not connected with the qualifications that they have. Alongside other measures, it is suggested that a convict should be involved in work related to the specialty they had before conviction. The authors also analyze the other countries' experience of involving convicts in intellectual labor.
Russian criminal science has long been developing within the methodological framework based on a classical linear concept of causation, which implies that there is a limited number of strictly defined typical criminogenic factors known in advance. Such an approach largely ignored the problems of complex, multi-factorial and ambiguous nature of the modern world. It had a negative effect on the science of criminology itself, as well as the possible practices of crime prevention and, in the end, resulted in a stagnation and crisis. A search for answers to the challenges of criminology's methodological renewal requires a turn to new, non-linear theories of social determination and their adaptation to the goals of criminological cognition of crime. Within the theory of non-linear determination, the category of "accidental", represented by an endless multitude of unforeseen circumstances, gains a special significance. Their criminological role remains unknown. Meanwhile, unforeseen, accidental circumstances could play a significant role in the genesis of crime and criminality. Their very existence "hacks" the basic tenet of the classical theory of causation: even when there is an aggregate of criminogenic factors traditionally viewed as necessary for committing a crime, it may be prevented by the interference of an unforeseen circumstance that disrupts the causation link and gives rise to a variety of new possibilities for the development of the criminal intent. A vi & scy;e versa, in the absence of a traditional conceivable criminogenic situation, one accidental factor may become a decisive circumstance sufficient for making a decision to commit a crime and putting it into action. Unforeseen circumstances may be different in their genetic, scale, content, functional characteristics: natural and social, large and small, criminogenic and anti-criminogenic. They may manifest themselves both before the moment when the criminal behavior mechanism starts functioning, in the process of formation of the future criminal's personality, and in each component of this mechanism: at the stage of planning, decision-making, carrying out a crime, as well as at the post-criminal stages. One of the tasks of the modern stage of criminology's development consists is to fill the general framework of theoretical knowledge on unforeseen circumstances with the necessary empirical information and, using this basis, to suggest new schemes of criminological determination.
The definition of the role and place of additional punishments in penology has traditionally led to scientific disputes. At the same time, the deprivation of a special, military rank or honorary title, class rank or state awards remains an insufficiently studied and debatable type of punishment. A discrepancy between the contents of such a punishment and the general principles of sentencing has been identified. The author points out a contradiction between the essence of this punishment and the traditional Russian moral-spiritual values, as well as the criminal law policy of the state. It is shown that the use of the deprivation of a special, military rank or honorary title, class rank or state awards deviates from the general strategy of allocating punishments. The analysis of the practice of this punishment's application over the last decade demonstrates that it is used infrequently. At the same time, in the last five years there has been a trend for widening the sphere of its application depending on the type of crime. In the last two years, there has been a considerable increase in the number of people sentenced to the deprivation of a special, military rank or honorary title, class rank or state awards, which is connected with the ongoing special military operation. However, the application of this punishment is connected with the domination of a formal approach of the court to the assessment of the grounds and feasibility of its use during the allocation of punishments. The courts evade the clarifications regarding the decision to use the deprivation of awards quoting Art. 48 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation. Court decisions on the necessity of using this punishment in the absence of aggravating circumstances or the presence of mitigating ones are viewed as controversial. A formal approach to characterizing a perpetrator's personality when allocating a punishment cancels out the opportunities for the court to individualize punishments by using the potential of the deprivation of a special, military rank or honorary title, class rank or state awards. The absence of a common procedure for the application of evaluation categories of this punishment results in the use of clauses of Art. 48 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation based on formal criteria. The article concludes that it is necessary to stop using the unreasonably increased repressive potential of this punishment and exclude it from the modern Russian system of punishments.
The modern legislation of any state provides for liability for intentionally giving false testimony. This article traces the history of the development of the legal liability of a witness in the Russian law of the 11th-16th centuries. It is established that the oldest sources of law did not provide for any liability for giving false testimony. The text of Russkaya Pravda, however, contain some provisions which helped ensure the truthfulness of witness statements. Firstly, it is the participation of several witnesses (between two and seven). Secondly, a fragmentary responsibility of witnesses to take an oath. Taking an oath meant that a witness will answer to a higher authority. Still, there was no legal responsibility. Legal responsibility of a witness was first included in the Pskov Judicial Charter. It consisted of the responsibility of an eyewitness to take part in a trial by battle against one of the sides in a dispute or a hired fighter. Differently from the modern legislation, a witness was responsible for any testimony, both false and truthful. Legal responsibility for false testimony was finally legally incorporated in the text of the Judicial Code of 1497. The factual basis of this responsibility was "false" witness testimony. Sanction consisted in the compensation of damages to a falsely accused person. The Judicial Code of 1550 supplemented material sanctions with a corporal punishment for the witness.
A mass introduction of information technologies into the social environment gives rise to new forms of organizing public governance, economic activities and communications. The use of decision-making algorithms, artificial intelligence and automated procedures in the public domain radically changes the landscape of corruption-related risks. If in the past corruption was mainly an inter-personal phenomenon based on a direct interaction between a briber and a bribetaker, today it could take place through the manipulation of programming codes, distortion of databases and covert influence on decision-making algorithms. Cyberspace anonymity, complexity of the functioning of modern information technologies, and a high concentration of critically valuable information in digital depositories all create a favorable environment for implementing corruption schemes of a new type. In such conditions traditional approaches to ensuring anticorruption activities are no longer effective, the society faces radically new challenges. Thus, there is an overdue need for reconsidering the conceptual basis of anticorruption work and forming a new scientific approach in order to develop an adequate response to the challenges of the information age. These circumstances increase a need for examining information technologies through the prism of anticorruption security, within the framework of an emerging theory of anticorruption criminological security that unites the conceptual and methodological bases of criminology, theory of national security and theory of crime prevention. The paradox of modern world is that information technologies, designed to increase transparency, objectivity and accountability of public governance, simultaneously create new, previously unknown channel of corruption influences. The dual character of modern information technologies presupposes that they are viewed as both an object of anticorruption criminological security that requires protection against corruption-related criminal infringements, and as a source of corruption-related criminal danger that could give rise to new threats to the protected social values. For citation. Shamekhina E.V. Information Technologies as an Object of Anticorruption Criminological Security and a Source of Corruption-Related Criminal Danger. Vserossiiskii kriminologicheskii zhurnal = Russian Journal of Criminology, 2026, vol. 20, no. 2, pp. 130-138. (In Russian). EDN: YDQRKA. DOI: 10.17150/2500-4255.2026.20(2).130-138.
Over the past thirty years Russian criminal procedure ideology, criminal proceedings' goals and values have been subject to periodical attempts at reinterpretation in connection with the emerging challenges and threats. The author shows that, regardless of changing ideological orientations and technological advances, two equally important values should retain priority for criminal proceedings. They derive from the nature of public and private interests: ensuring the security of the state and the society by controlling crime, and protecting the rights and liberties of a person involved in criminal proceedings. Due to this, the author views criminal procedure goal-setting not within the context of "irreconcilable struggle" between the interests of the state and those of the individual, but rather as a need to achieve an optimal balance of such interests. The author stresses that the most prospective area for achieving such a balance and, thus, the social purpose of criminal proceedings could be the concept of their transparency, which may become the procedural basis for open, accessible and fair proceedings in a criminal case. In their turn, the instruments that can ensure the transparent foundations of criminal proceedings are processes of digitization and digital transformation of this type of state activities, which correspond to the social essence of the criminal process and the goals of reaching the balance between the interests of the person, the society and the state.
The article analyzes thresholds of criminal liability for causing harm to human health, namely, from what moment it becomes subject to criminal law prohibition, and how adequately this prohibition corresponds to the danger of its consequences. The author conducts a detailed examination of different types of criminal law prohibitions depending on the gravity of the inflicted harm (the first threshold of criminal liability), and the form of guilt of the person who committed the act (the second threshold of criminal liability). Besides, different forms of causing harm to health are studied: intentional and negligent infliction of grave harm to health (Art. 111 and 118 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation); intentional infliction of moderately severe and light harm (correspondingly, Art. 112 and 115 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation); as a criminogenic feature in other crimes; as a qualifying feature (the third threshold of criminal liability). The question of the influence that the inflicted harm has on the punishment and the severity of sanctions is studied in detail (the fourth threshold of liability). Besides, the author dwells on the camouflaged use of the feature of inflicting harm to health in criminal law, namely, the attributes of violence (the fifth threshold of criminal liability). Conclusions are formulated, the key of which are as following. A greater clearness is needed when a number of features are ascribed to some specific harm; sanctions for inflicting harm to health in the basic offences are obviously set too low (apart from the intentional infliction of grave harm) and should be toughened, including the introduction of a custodial sentence in the sanction of simple light bodily harm (as an alternative to punishments not connected with the deprivation of liberty); sanctions for crimes bordering on bodily harm (first of all, murder) should be altered; the same refers to the sanction for the negligent infliction of grave bodily harm (in the basic offence), which cannot today be punished by a custodial sentence.
The informatization of society acted, in essence, as a determinant for the change of a criminal model: a crime method based on the use of instruments of information-telecommunication technologies is becoming a dominant one in the mechanism of criminal actions of a rather wide range. One of the basic levels of criminalistics is the system of general scientific methods of cognition; the specifics of their application in the aspect under consideration is determined by a special sphere of their application - the cognition of the elements of criminal mechanism reflected in the form of traces in the digital environment. The system-information approach may be put forward as a methodological concept aimed at the development of criminalistic methods and means of researching digital information objects. The methodological basis of this study is the dialectic method of research cognition as a universal instrument for analyzing complex systems. System-structural and formal-logical methods, analysis, synthesis, induction and deduction, modelling and analogy were also used. In view of the growing role of digital information objects in the paradigm of developing provisions of the system of criminalistic support of crime investigation, the system-information approach is a methodological concept that unites the principles of systemic analysis and the use of information technologies aimed at developing an integrated system of methodological constructs, methods and applied algorithms of a comprehensive study of forensically relevant digital information objects in the unity of informational and organizational-managerial aspects. The integration of system-information approach in the methodology of criminalistics forms an innovative area of a complex cognition of both theoretical problems and applied tasks, it appropriately creates prerequisites for improving the system of criminalistic support of investigating crimes that were primarily committed in the digital environment. The understanding of the sematic structure of digital information objects formed on the basis of the presented methodology will make it possible to work out a classification of digital traces, to optimize the processes of registering forensically relevant information, to assemble a set of technologies required for this task.
The author examines modern approaches to the category of "digital forensics", presents their classification, describes and evaluates each of them from the standpoint of admissibility, scientific character, logics and absence of inner contradictions, as well as objectivity and correspondence to the goals of forensics' development in the digital era. An assessment is given for the principal possibility of using the term "digital forensics" to describe a special digital theory or any other structural element of one of the branches of science. It is concluded that such approaches lead to terminological duplication and, similarly to the denial of the existence of digital forensics (refusal to incorporate into science provisions connected with the introduction of digital technologies in both criminal and forensic activities), do not fully correspond to the needs of the modern stage of forensics' development. The author believes that viewing digital forensics as an independent sphere of technical scientific knowledge detached from criminal law and legal science in general, or as a category where a human could possibly be excluded from the subjects of forensic work, is incorrect and unsubstantiated from the standpoint of systemic scientific knowledge and modern ideas regarding the role of a man in court proceedings. It is noted that the category "digital forensics" could be used as one of the key characteristics reflecting the global character of the digital transformation of science, besides, its interpretation should be as broad as possible. It is necessary to discuss not the digitization of forensics as a process fragmentally represented by isolated works or recommendations, but a digital transformation of science as a whole, a systemic restructuring of all theoretical constructs and practical recommendations. The author presents the scientific substantiation of the formulated thesis, including from the standpoint of practical forensic work.
Problems associated with crime and caused by its public danger have long attracted the attention of scholars of different specialties who strive to explain its numerous regular features with the purpose of future prevention. A vast amount of statistical, research and other data have been accumulated in the past decades; their analysis makes it possible to trace the transformation of the scientific cognition of the concept and contents of crime and, consequently, to substantiate the authors' approach in accordance with the demands of a scientific doctrine. At the current stage of criminology's development, researchers substantiate numerous original approaches to the definition of crime which, while preserving their scientific value, require unification. Research methods (analysis, historicism, comparative-legal) were used to achieve this goal. The method of historicism allowed the authors to formulate some conclusions based on scientific and factual data accumulated by several generations, while taking into account normative legal acts at a certain stage of the development of state and law, viewed in their logical development. The comparative-legal method was used to compare and analyze the achievements of Russian and foreign scientific doctrines, including those developed in the post-Soviet countries, as well as the practical work of Russian and foreign law enforcement bodies connected with the processing of statistical data on the quantitative characteristics of registered crimes. The use of analysis made it possible to determine and study the features of crime as a systemic-structural phenomenon. As a result, the examination of Russian criminological doctrine from the standpoint of historicism allowed the authors to identify three time periods that differ in their understanding of crime. Differences in crime contents in research and practical work were established, which became one of the foundations for singling out the levels of crime cognition aimed at the systematization of modern scientific knowledge. The authors present their own definition of crime as a social-legal phenomenon manifested in the system that consists of an aggregate of publicly dangerous actions prohibited by criminal law.
The object of this research is different positions of criminologists regarding the understanding of economic crime, as well as statistical data on crimes in the sphere of economic activities and persons who committed them in 1997-2024. The goal of the study is to demonstrate the necessity of working out a unified approach to the understanding of economic crime for the criminological analysis of this type of crime, which will make it possible to develop more effective measures of its prevention while taking into account its qualitative and quantitative features. It is stressed that currently neither criminological science, nor the theory of criminal law demonstrate a unity of opinions regarding the concept of economic crime and the scope of crimes that constitute it. The authors believe that it does not allow for a quality criminological analysis of economic crimes or for working out effective measures of counteracting them. Therefore, it is proposed to rely on the text of criminal law when defining economic crimes and to classify as economic the crimes prohibited by Chapter 22 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation. The authors use statistical method and analysis to study the condition and dynamics of economic crimes for over a 30-year period, estimate damages inflicted by economic crimes, examine their structure, and identify the groups of crimes demonstrating the most unfavorable tendencies. It is stressed that, in spite of negative indices of the condition of economic crimes in some years, including the period between 2021 and 2024, the reduction in indices is, in fact, connected with the activity of lawmakers who regularly de-criminalize the sphere of economic activities by raising the sums of high (especially high) damages (income, size) that act as an essential criminal feature of economic crime. The examination of the structure of economic crime allowed the authors to discover that for some economic crimes there is no information regarding the facts of their registration which, on the one hand, casts doubt on the ever-expanding list of offences under Chapter 22 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, and on the other - allows for more targeted efforts of economic crime prevention.
The current legislation of the Russian Federation does not include the definition of the concept of pornographic materials or objects. The analysis of a number of normative legal acts and materials of the law enforcement practice allowed the authors to conclude that the objects or materials of pornographic nature should correspond to two criteria: they depict or describe, fully or partially, naked human sexual organs, or (and) a real sexual intercourse, or other actions of sexual nature, or an imitation of such actions, including those with the participation of animals; such a depiction or description has a sexual goal. However, the blanket approach to presenting the concept under consideration does not ensure its sufficient legal certainty, which is proven by a lack of consistency in the practice of categorizing the images of some parts of human body as pornography, the difficulties of distinguishing between the goal of producing such objects or materials and the goal of their dissemination, as well as the impossibility of differentiating between this concept and the concept of "goods of sexual nature". It is proven that the insufficient legal certainty of the concept of pornographic materials or objects does not only lead to diverse decisions in the practice of law enforcement, but acts as an obstacle for the enforcement of the principle of guilt in criminal proceedings, because it does not provide an opportunity for each potential criminal to foresee the criminal law consequences of their actions (inaction). The observance of the principle of legal (formal) certainty of law and, as a consequence, the principle of guilt, would be facilitated by the inclusion of the concept of "pornographic materials or objects" in the text of criminal law. The authors present the definition of such a concept, which could be included as a note to Art. 242 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation. Since the concept under analysis should be recognized as a legal one, the law enforcer should be able establish the presence of absence of the corresponding feature in each case, while the expert should establish the presence or absence of separate features, defining which could pose difficulties to the law enforcer due to a lack of expert knowledge. A different approach, under which the expert's opinion is the only argument used for recognizing some materials or objects as pornographic, excludes an opportunity for the very subject or the crime, who lacks expert knowledge, to realize the nature of the committed actions as it is impossible to establish and realize the pornographic nature of the objects. However, the law enforcement practice in this area is uneven and allows for cases of objective imputation, which requires a correction and unification of approaches.
A retrospective analysis reveals that criminology, both domestic and international, has undergone the following key stages in its development: the emergence and development of criminological views within the classical school of criminal law; further development of criminological ideas and theories within the framework of positivism (within anthropological, psychological, and sociological approaches); modern criminology (the criminology of industrial society, the criminology of the scientific and technological revolution); postmodern criminology (or the criminology of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, the criminology of the information and digital society). The most active representatives of postmodern criminology call it neo-criminology, viewed as a new stage in criminology's development. In my opinion, this is not true. Postmodernist ideas, despite their appeal, have not gained widespread acceptance in Russian criminological science. They haunted the minds of only a few criminologists, like a phantom, and spilled out in the form of critical statements (admittedly, quite sharp ones) directed at state power, criminal legislation, and the fundamental concepts of criminal law and criminology (crime and punishment, criminality, etc.). Post-modern criminology never achieved a complete theoretical formulation in our country; the revolution never took place. Nevertheless, postmodern criminology should not be viewed with mild irony, as its foundation - postmodern ideology - poses a threat not only to criminological security, but also to Russia's public law interests and national security. Such a threat stems not from the individual views and ideas of neo-criminologists, but from postmodern ideology itself. Therefore, this article continues the discussion on postmodern criminology started in the "Russian Journal of Criminology"; it is devoted to a critical analysis and evaluation of the main tenets of postmodern criminology. The primary method of scientific analysis is the ontological method of cognition, characterized by a search for objective content of fundamental scientific concepts and categories. The author believes that Russian criminology will remain stable and have prospects for further development only if it draws on both past theoretical developments and contemporary research into crime prevention. This requires an ontological understanding of the problems of criminological science and practice.
The subject of criminological analysis includes its description not only as a socially dangerous (and even criminal) phenomenon, but also as a socially useful one, as it indicates somebody's unlawful activities and thus gives an opportunity to suppress them. From the standpoint of criminology, the victimological aspect of the problem poses a special interest, namely, what people most often fall victim to compromising materials, and how are these victims selected. In terms of predictions, it is important to assess the criminological situation while taking into account the dynamics of the information warfare unleashed against Russia by the collective West. Finally, it is necessary to identify a complex of measures aimed at preventing the criminogenic influence of compromising information on the contemporary Russian society on the one hand, and on maintaining its socially useful function, on the other. The following types of compromising information are singled out: lower-level, judicial, economic, ideological, and political. Lower-level compromising material includes libel and coercion to the acts of a sexual nature under the threat of disseminating the information that damages honor and dignity, or undermines a reputation with the goal of making a person to perform certain actions. Judicial compromising material encompasses crimes against justice connected with blackmail, economic - crimes in the sphere of business whose objective side includes blackmail and mudslinging against competitors. Ideological compromising information is an aggregate of actions connected with the public dissemination of knowingly false information and the rehabilitation of Nazism. Common phenomena here are pseudo-patriotism (masked and hidden mockery of patriotism) and paganism characterized by nationalism on the verge of Nazism. Political compromising information is twofold: internal and external. The internal component is characterized by the activities of officials that undermine the authority of the state and, sometimes, national security. The authors present some suggestions for the suppression of such activities. The external component consists in the active information-propaganda activities of persons under the foreign influence, as well as intense Russophobic claims of European politicians. Attention is drawn to the usefulness of compromising information viewed as an embodiment of an important function of the system of state and municipal governance - a feedback channel. Objective feedback signals can only be produced by independent subjects of civil activity. Currently, they include structures of online civil society.
The relevance of the study is based on the necessity to hold a comprehensive review of approaches to the organization and performance of forensic examinations the conditions of rapid digital transformation. The author identifies and systematizes key problems hindering the effective improvement of forensic practices: organizational-legal (lack of cooperation between agencies, outdated legislation), methodological (absence of unified digital methodologies, problems of validating artificial intelligence instruments), human resources (insufficient competencies, unpreparedness of the pert community to the digital transformation), organizational-technical (insufficient material and technical support, problems of information security). Special attention is paid to the transformation of the objects of expert examinations, and to the emergence of such new phenomena as deepfakes, digital financial assets, digital copies of documents, etc. Using the analysis of Russian and international experience, as well as the latest research findings, the author proposes some ways of solving the abovementioned problems to improve forensic work, including: modernizing legislation; working out scientific provisions on the digital development of forensic organizations; establishing a unified inter-agency system of certifying digital forensic methods and software; implementing a risk-centered approach to the use of artificial intelligence; designing a new model of professional training for experts on the basis of inter-disciplinary educational programs; developing forensic work infrastructure. It is concluded that an effective improvement of forensic work in the digital era is only possible if the organizational-legal, methodological, material-technical problems are simultaneously resolved using an integrative approach.
The authors claim that, in spite of the advances of digital technologies and their introduction in the work of courts, prosecutors, preliminary investigation bodies in the sphere of criminal proceedings, the issue of the concept of digital evidence and its place in the system of criminal procedure evidence has not yet been resolved, and the specific features of its collection, verification, assessment and storage in a criminal case have not been regulated. Taking into account international experience, the authors prove the possibility and necessity of including the concept of electronic evidence in the criminal procedure law. Two approaches to digital evidence in the science of criminal procedure are presented: treating it as information contained in a material carrier, or as information existing solely in the digital form regardless of the carrier. The authors support the latter approach because it excludes the risks of losing the evidentiary value of information due to the use of a specific material carrier. The analysis of court practice and the positions of scholars shows such risks to be the following: damaging the carrier, which results in the loss of electronic evidence; absence of an opportunity to examine hidden electronic data of the evidence (date of creation, size and other settings, digital functionality of the corresponding web page); existence of special electronic evidence - 3D models, which cannot be put onto a material carrier. Within this context, the authors analyze the practice of using electronic evidence in criminal proceedings in the Russian Federation in connection with the absence of an electronic criminal case, which does not require such evidence to be placed on an external carrier. Using the analysis of the interconnection of electronic evidence and an electronic criminal case, they conclude that an electronic case is the only suitable form of storing electronic evidence. It is summarized that the use of electronic evidence in the absence of an electronic criminal case in Russian court and investigation practice is premature, since it is expedient to store such evidence in its digital format exclusively in the materials of an electronic criminal case, whose era is yet to come in the Russian Federation.
The Martens Clause, first introduced in the preamble to the 1899 Hague Convention on the Laws and Customs of War on Land, can now be found, in various formulations, in a number of important international treaties. Most of them were ratified by the USSR and are currently active in its successor, the Russian Federation. Part 1, Art. 356 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation contains a blanket disposition referring to these international treaties. Thus, thanks to the Martens Clause, the means and methods of warfare prohibited by customary international law become, in fact, stipulated by an international treaty, which could in practice lead to the application of analogy in the qualification of this crime. In this connection, the author examines the problem of correlation between the Martens Clause and the principle of legality in Russian criminal law. The author does not deny the great significance of the Martens Clause in international criminal law, but believes that it cannot be applied to Russian criminal law as it violates the principle of legality (Art. 3 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation). The article examines various doctrinal approaches to the problem, presents an analysis of a number of important changes in the international sphere that took place in recent years, and touches upon the problem of the absence of a unified definition of the Martens Clause and its components. The author concludes that it is necessary to supplement Art. 356 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation with a note that would exclude the application of international customs, which the corresponding international treaties refer to, from the qualification of this crime. Besides, in the future, new international treaties should only be ratified with a caveat that the Martens Clause is invalid for Russia. It is suggested that this rule should be included in Art. 25 of the Federal Law of July 15, 1995 & numero; 101-& Fcy;& Zcy; "On International Treaties of the Russian Federation" and (or) the Decree of the Plenary Session of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation of October 10, 2003 & numero; 5 "On the Application of Universally Recognized Principles and Norms of International Law and of International Treaties of the Russian Federation by Courts of General Jurisdiction".
