Nikolai Andrianovich Neklyudov in the History of National Criminology

The aim of the article is to actualize and give a new meaning to the concept "criminal statistics", which emerged during the formation of legal science and eventually became axiomatic, to fill it with a more modern content based on the analysis of the historical experience of the pre-revolutionary Russian legal science. The master's thesis "Criminal Statistical Studies" of Nikolai Neklyudov, published as a separate edition in 1865, is analyzed. The article draws parallels in the historical and contemporary context regarding the approaches to the study of crime and the criminal, which allows the author to distance himself from the "outdated" knowledge of legal reality and propose a different way of studying the criminal environment and the formation of the criminal policy of the state. The study reveals the main provisions of Neklyudov's concept of criminal statistics as a scientifically based methodology. The scholar proposes to start with the age of a person, which accumulates the fullness of the person's spiritual and physical features and allows establishing the interrelations and the interdependence of human behavior and the external environment in which this behavior manifests itself. The central element of the concept is the concept of criminal statistics. The main scientific approach to the study of immoral and criminal acts is determined: a philosophical one, which makes it possible to look at criminal life as a phenomenon with its causes, forms of manifestation, conditions of existence and modifications, both quantitative and qualitative. The analysis of Neklyudov's thesis shows several important and scientifically relevant provisions. Criminal statistics as a method of scientific knowledge is one of the fundamental components of criminological research. Statistical data are objective; therefore, it is possible to identify both quantitative and qualitative (via content analysis) characteristics of "criminal life". Criminal statistics provides a comprehensive vision of this life, in which there is a person with their inner world and the environment they live in, and which affects their behavior. Criminal statistics, with its educational potential, can influence the choice of the criminal law strategy of the state and the legal (sectoral: criminal, administrative, etc.) policy. Criminal policy together with criminal statistics is defined as the "weal of modern culture". The latter conclusion has a deep meaning and an eternal importance not only for the development of criminology as a science, but also for legal science and practice in general. The legal policy of the state is one of the forms of manifestation of a certain level of political and legal culture of society and, therefore, the level of the very life of this society. If statistics indicate the external causes that support a low standard of living and a high level of crime, the weakness and inertia of the state become apparent.

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