The influence of legal mentality on the type of criminal proceedings in Russia

The paper analyzes the prospects for the development of a new criminal procedural law to replace the Criminal Procedure Code of the Russian Federation of 2001, which has lost its consistency. Using legal methods of scientific research, as well as the cultural method, the author analyzes the purpose of criminal procedural activity, the historical background of its formation and consolidation, as well as adversariality as an ideal form of contemporary criminal procedure. The paper shows that liberal legal values enshrined in the form of the purpose and system of principles of the Criminal Procedure Code of the Russian Federation of 2001 do not reflect the real interests of Russian society in the public sphere. Believing that determining the purpose of the criminal procedure and the place of adversariality in the system of its principles is a methodological mistake of the legislator, the author makes a number of conceptual proposals for improving the criminal procedure law. The author proposes to clarify the formulation of the goals and objectives of criminal proceedings, taking into account the specifics of the legal mentality of Russians. When formulating the purpose of criminal procedural activity, it is necessary to indicate the tendency of the criminal procedure to identify correctly the factual circumstances of what happened achieved through repeated verification of the facts in different procedures and by different officials. The tasks of criminal procedural activity formulated in the Criminal Procedure Code of the Russian Federation should be implemented in pre-trial and judicial proceedings by different criminal procedure subjects. It is proposed that the tasks of criminal procedural activity should include identifying a guilty person and assigning punishment to him; acquittal of an innocent person and his rehabilitation; identifying the factual circumstances of an incident; protection of individual rights and freedoms. Adversariality should be excluded from the criminal procedure principles, and the criminal procedure itself should be organized according to a mixed type with investigative pre-trial proceedings and adversarial judicial proceedings.