Stereotypes of professional legal consciousness and the problems of "feedback" of law enforcement system and society

"Feedback" between any society and state is a condition for the normal functioning of state machine and law enforcement system. Realization of separate directions of criminal policy demands adequate reflection of corresponding conceptual ideas and their entrenchment in legal rules and law enforcement practice both in professional and ordinary legal consciousness. Russian legislative and law enforcement practice show that the adequacy of such a reflection is not always ensured and this can have a negative influence on the realization of any anti-criminal programs. The stereotypes of professional legal consciousness in the field of state criminal policy realization that are formed in the course of exercising of various kinds of legal activities differ from the analogous stereotyped images in mass social consciousness. The difference in understanding of the same phenomena in different social groups can hamper "feedback" between the state and society and can deform many ideas of criminal policy in the course of its realization. The following ideas can be referred to the stereotypes of professional legal consciousness: 1) Intensification of fight against crime and the principle of "zero tolerance" for it constitute the basic way for raising the effectiveness of criminal policy realization; 2) Gravity of crimes justifies the cruelty within the framework of the system of criminal penalties for them as well as various departures from common requirements of the criminal procedural form; 3) Justice is a matter within the province of empowered subjects having legal education and definite state offices; 4) To raise the effectiveness of separate directions of criminal policy it is necessary to make special laws connected with these very directions; 5) It is necessary to create special departments or even state bodies responsible for the realization of criminal policy in definite directions. The above and other similar stereotypes of professional legal consciousness are not more than slogans, which can form a false vision of reality and, thus, they need a constant correlation with it.

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