Professor Sergey A. Eliseev: His criminological legacy

This analysis examines the principal criminological works of Doctor of Juridical Sciences, Professor Sergey A. Eliseev, who headed the Department of Criminal Law at Tomsk State University for over two decades. It establishes that Professor Eliseev initially made his mark in the criminal sciences precisely as a criminologist. The study highlights the author's distinctive approach to researching profit-driven crime, which was grounded in the predominant understanding of criminology's subject matter during the 1970s-1980s. This paradigm encompassed crime as a aggregate of offenses committed within a specific territory and timeframe, the personality of offenders, the causes and conditions of crime, and its prevention. It is established that the scholar based his delineation of profit-driven crime on the core motive of material gain-the offender's pursuit of unlawful property benefit. The analysis notes his comprehensive characterization of key statistical indicators of profit-driven crime in pre-Soviet and Soviet Russian society (including its scale, structure, dynamics, impact, and trends), its causes and conditions, and a criminological "portrait" of the profit-driven offender, including a typology distinguishing primarily between habitual and situational offenders. Finally, the work notes the researcher's conclusion that the primary focus for preventing profit-driven crime should be the social environment which forms, sustains, or facilitates the criminal motivation for material gain. The authors declare no conflicts of interests.

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