Prosecutor's supervision of the execution of laws by bodies engaged in operational search activities: reasons and grounds

Introduction: prosecutor's supervision over the execution of laws by bodies carrying out operative-investigative activity, this specific activity of Prosecutor's offices on behalf of the state and designed to ensure the rule of law, unity and strengthening of legality in the implementation of the operational units and their officials, operative-investigative activities. Such activities may be carried out by an authorized Prosecutor only if there are reasons and grounds provided for by law. In the theory of Prosecutor's supervision and special literature, there is no consensus on this issue. Various points of view are expressed on the concepts of "reasons" and "grounds" and their relation to the subject of Prosecutor's supervision. Materials and methods: the powers of the authorized Prosecutor in the field of supervision of operational search activities are defined as General rules of the Federal law "On the Prosecutor's office" (article 22), and special rules provided for in article 21 of the Federal law "On operational search activities". Currently, the technology of this type of supervision is defined by the order of the Prosecutor General's Office of the Russian Federation dated February 15, 2011. No. 33 "On the organization of Prosecutor's supervision over the execution of laws in the implementation of operational investigative activities", which provides in General terms the reasons and grounds for organizing a Prosecutor's check. However, this document does not distinguish between reasons and grounds. In the process of research, a set of methods was used: General scientific (dialectical method of cognition); private scientific, including formal-logical, concrete-sociological, statistical methods and the method of studying documents (content analysis). Results of the study: allowed the author to clarify the concepts of "reasons" and "grounds", determine their content, and provide a list of reasons and grounds, taking into account the current regulatory legal acts regulating the type of Prosecutor's supervision in question, and law enforcement practice. In addition, the approaches and ways to improve Prosecutor's supervision that are available in the special and legal literature are summarized and formulated. Findings and conclusions: the state of legality in the field of operational investigative activities does not yet meet the requirements. There are facts of numerous violations of constitutional rights and freedoms of man and citizen. The activity of the heads of operational divisions to control the legality of the actions of officials of these divisions implementing operational search activities is not organized at the proper level. Among the priority topics to be studied in depth by specialists of the theory of Prosecutor's supervision and the theory of operational investigative activities, along with others, should be the control and supervision of operational investigative activities. Strengthening the rule of law for operational investigative activities can only be ensured by joint efforts of the heads of operational divisions and Prosecutor's offices. When conducting Prosecutor's supervision over execution of laws by bodies carrying out operative-investigative activity, should be strictly followed for this reason and reasons, we consider it appropriate to exclude from the practice of the implementation of prosecutorial inspections by "spurious grounds" that discreditied in our opinion the analyzed supervision.