Essential Violations of the Law at the Stage of Preliminary Investigation

This work is devoted to the study of essential violations of the criminal procedure law committed by law enforcement officials at the stage of preliminary investigation. To achieve this goal, the author analyzed the principles of criminal proceedings, and identified typical forms of their violation during the preliminary investigation. Particular attention was paid to the violation of the principle of respect for the honor and dignity of the individual in criminal proceedings. The author proceeds from the fact that the quintessence of the violation of rights and freedoms of participants in criminal proceedings at the preliminary investigation stage is a violation of the prohibition of torture and inhuman or degrading treatment. The existence of such a practice reduces the modern pre-trial criminal proceedings to an inquisitorial type, which recognized the defendant as the object of study, the source of procedural information, but not a full-fledged subject of the criminal process. The problem of torture is aggravated by the lack of effective investigation of complaints on torture and inhuman or degrading treatment, which is caused by the systemic flaws of the modern Russian investigation, among which are: the lack of institutional and factual independence of the preliminary investigation bodies and their officials; an evaluation system that focuses investigators on the result, but not on the quality of the investigation; the lack of resources to conduct effective investigations; the ineffectiveness of prosecutorial oversight and judicial control over the investigation.