Administrative and Legal Means to Prevent Offenses Committed in Public Places

Introduction. An offense committed in a public place causes a public response, undermines people's sense of security, confidence in the effectiveness of the system of personal security in the state. Building an effective system of administrative and legal means to prevent offenses committed in public places is a strategic task in ensuring national security. Ensuring the security of a public place is the shortest way to reduce the total number of crimes, as well as to increase the authority of the law enforcement system in the country. Materials and Methods. Statistical data on offenses committed in public places, scientific literature, including foreign literature, devoted to the prevention of offenses committed in public places, the legal framework containing the rules of behavior in public places, restrictions related to this, and the legal status of law enforcement units involved in public order maintenance were studied. The methodological basis includes the formal legal method and general approaches and methods related to methodological apparatus of legal science: analysis, synthesis, system approach. 162 respondents were interviewed including 67 police officers (district police officers, patrol officers), and 17 representatives of citizens' law enforcement associations. Results and Discussion. Prevention of offenses committed in public places is a set of legal and organizational ways to influence the causes and conditions of the offense. The identity of the offender should be studied as a general social phenomenon, regardless of the severity of the illegal tort. A peculiarity of administrative and legal means to prevent offenses committed in public places is the special significance of the state of the public place as an independent object of preventive action. Conclusions. The system of administrative and legal means used to prevent offences committed in public places includes legal and organizational means of providing security of the public place, in particular, by restricting the presence of persons of a certain category in the public place. Positive results of the prevention of the mentioned offenses are achieved by effective public order protection forces, including citizens’ public and private law enforcement formations.