Ethical and cultural determinants for the extensive use of criminal extrajudicial forms of protection of personal rights and freedoms within the framework of criminal legal relations in Russia

Since the time when the state assumed the rights to violence and delegated powers to protect rights and freedoms of its citizens against illegal acts, law enforcement activity in our country has been carried out by means of functioning of the established system of law enforcement agencies headed by the court. Despite this, extrajudicial forms of protecting the individual rights and freedoms still exist in the sphere of criminal legal relations in Russian society and are realized in practice; these forms can be of both a non-criminal (positive) and a criminal (negative) character. The latter are widely spread but we do not notice it because of their extremely high latency, particularly, in the sphere of domestic relations. In our opinion, criminal extrajudicial forms include the following: criminal response to a provocative behavior of an injured party; abuse of right; resuscitation of criminal foundations of common law (criminal lynch law). The given article deals with criminal lynch law since it dominates in the group and has been studied insufficiently. Lynch law can be understood as an independent illegal extrajudi-cial response of citizens to the violation of legal prescriptions, moral prohibitions, customs and traditions in the form of revenge. It has been noted that lynch law characterized a pre-state society, weak state power and times of undeveloped law when conflicts between people were resolved in primitive and barbaric ways. However, nowadays we can see a flurry of lynch law in modern Russia. The article gives some characteristics of ethical and cultural determinants for the extensive use of criminal extrajudicial forms of protection of personal rights and freedoms in Russia in general and lynch law, in particular. The given determinants are connected with some tendencies of ethical and cultural degradation of Russian community and are mutually conditioned with it. Legal nihilism, criminalization of society, extension of criminal subculture, glorification of those involved in the administration of lynch justice are described and characterized in the article.

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