Implementation of the Principle of the Language of Criminal Proceedings

The article is devoted to the realization of the principle of the language of criminal proceedings. The author talks about the importance and significance of the principle, particularly in the context of increasing number of crimes committed on the territory of the Russian Federation by foreign citizens and stateless persons. To support this conclusion the author provides the official statistics of the Ministry of the Interior of Russia. Based on the system analysis of the criminal procedure legislation and enforcement practice the author draws a conclusion about common errors and deficiencies in the work of the preliminary investigation in facilitating this principle. In addition, the article covers the problems of conceptual and uneven understanding of language skills or insufficient command of the language in which the proceedings are conducted by the organs of initial inquiry or pre-trial investigation and the trial itself. Therefore the author proposes his original wording of the concept of "command of the language of criminal proceedings...". This article provides references to research publications and scientific articles of expert processualists on the subject of research. Besides, it is argued that this principle of criminal procedure aims at guaranteeing the minimum procedural protection of the individual from unlawful, unjustified conviction charges, restriction of rights and freedoms. Separately the attention is drawn to the problem of provision of interpreters of particular languages requested by law enforcement agencies from forensic translation organizations in order to engage them in the investigative activities. The article provides an analysis of judicial practice on issues concerning the provision of participants who have no command on lacks command of the language being used in the proceedings of a criminal case. This study allowed the author to critically regard the changes and amendments to the criminal procedure legislation. In his view, the existing criminal procedural mechanisms are enough to ensure effective protection of the rights of persons with no command or insufficient command of the language of criminal proceedings. In this regard, the author reasons the need to strengthen the supervision over the activities of the bodies of inquiry and preliminary investigation, in the part relating to ensuring the rights of persons with no command or insufficient command of the language of criminal proceedings.

the language of criminal proceedings, the principle of criminal proceedings, investigator, inquiry officer, Prosecutor, court

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