Features of Russian and American criminalistics development: technics, tactics and investigation technique

The article is dedicated to the identification of specific features of the current situation and development of the Russian and foreign criminalistics' basic aspects. Authors study the structure and content of criminalistics and some trends of its development by the example of Russia and the USA. Based on the analysis of the scientific literature and textbooks on crimi-nalistics there demonstrated the ratio of the traditional for Russian criminalistics sections such as technics, tactics and investigative technique with the relevant developments of American scientists. Authors argue that the Russian criminalistics today is the most integrated and full-structured science. In the US the term "criminalistics" in its traditional for Russian science meaning is not used, research in criminalistics is provided within the frames of a few sciences - criminal procedures, legal psychology, evidence, and to a large extent forensic science. There refuted the recent opinion of some Russian criminalists that American criminalistics is considered exclusively as technical support to the investigation. During the last 20 years both Russian and American criminalistics have been actively developed. The analysis of the US scientific literature on criminalistics has identified that American scientists have provided deeper research in forensic tactics, investigation and prosecution of different types of crime as well as in tactical support in trial. It is specified that the level of technical support of investigation in the US is pretty high. At the same time the system of technics as a section of science is not well-structured though its meaning is wider and includes a number of natural, medical, technical, chemical and other sciences. This section itself is considered to be the central one in American criminalistics. Among the branches of technics that are the same in Russia and USA authors mention such as study of footprints and other kinds of traces, handwriting, armament science, registration and some others. Tactics in criminalistics of the US is more often named as police tactics. Authors identify three parts in it. Among specific features of the American tactics there mentioned the description of characteristics that a detective should have. In both countries there conducted researches on tactical failures and ways to overcome them. The central part of tactics is dedicated to the technology of police intelligence and other different kinds of police investigative actions. The final part of tactics considers features of policemen's participation in trial; there deeply developed strategy and tactics of winning jury trials. Authors analyze that there is no research on the theory of investigative techniques in the US though there are works on investigation of a number of specific crime types; their structure is not unified and depends on the specifics of a crime type. Authors make a conclusion that due to the development of new technologies and new crime activities at national and international levels there needed to integrate research on crim-inalistics and provide joint research by criminalists of different countries.

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