Civil action in criminal proceedings as a universal means of redress for pecuniary and non-pecuniary damage caused by crime

The article notes that sufficient reimbursement for injury to victims of crime is an urgent and global issue, for which solution international legal standards, which are regarded as generally recognized principles and regulations of international law and international treaties, as well as enactments containing their official interpretation, are significant. The article critically evaluates the point of view of some individual scientists who deny the need to stipulate the civil claim concept the in the Code of criminal procedure of the Russian Federation as it exists in modern Russian criminal proceedings not only due to the historical experience of the legislator, have long appreciated the evident advantages of the united procedure, but also in its consistency with foreign trends in the development of this concept, aimed at ensuring the implementation of international standards in the sphere of promotion and protection of the human and civil rights. Despite the fact that the legislator applies different concepts in determining the consequences of torts (including crimes) in the regulations of substantive and procedural law as follows: harm and damage, there has been concluded that it is the injury (property or moral) that constitutes the attribute of obligations caused by the injury infliction, which allows the term to be used legitimately when covering issues of reimbursement for injury in criminal proceedings. Taking into account that a civil claim in criminal proceedings is a way to reimburse not only property, but also moral damage caused by a crime, the most urgent issues that need to be resolved are identified as follows: 1) lack of general doctrinal approaches to determining moral injury and its correlation with other types of injury; 2) inconsistency of the current investigative and judicial practice in determining the amount of compensation for moral injury; 3) ineffectiveness of procedural mechanisms for compensation for moral injury caused by a crime. The current judicial practice of refusing to satisfy claims for reimbursement of moral injury in the case of a crime against property, in the absence of violence against the victim and other actions affecting the life, health, and dignity of the individual has been recognized as not complying with the requirements of the law regulating the status of the victim and the civil plaintiff. According to the authors' point of view, the lack of unified approach to determining of the amount of moral injury caused by crimes is due to the evaluative nature of its definition, when there are no clear estimative criteria, which leads to a tendency to reduce the amount of reimbursement, although reimbursement for moral injury in an adequate amount would more guarantee the restoration of violated rights of citizens in the sphere of criminal proceedings. Since moral injury can be the result not only of a crime, but also of illegal criminal prosecution or illegal conviction of a person involved in its commission, it is necessary to establish a unified amount of reimbursement for the injury.

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