Pre-trial agreement on cooperation with minors

Introduction: the article discusses the possibility of concluding a pre-trial cooperation agreement (hereinafter referred to as PCA) with minors who are brought to criminal responsibility, analyzes the state of this procedural institution in the current legislation of the Russian Federation and the legislation of foreign states, as well as the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation’s position on this issue. Materials and Methods: international legislation (for example, the Beijing Rules), the current norms of Russian legislation and legislation of foreign states, explanations of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, as well as the results of research and the views of other authors on the issue under consideration were used as research materials. The research was conducted on the basis of the method of materialistic dialectics with the use of a number of other general scientific (analysis, synthesis, comparison, description) and special scientific (comparative legal, legal, statistical method, method and study of documents - materials of judicial and investigative practice). Results: the author substantiates the need to lift the ban on the conclusion of PCA with minors both to improve the effectiveness of the fight against organized crime and in the interests of minors themselves Discussion and Conclusions: tthe author has identified an imbalance in the norms of the institute of PCA, which is expressed in the fact that, despite the right of a legal representative provided for by the criminal procedure law to apply for the conclusion of a minor PCA (Part 1 of Article 3171 of the Code of Criminal Procedure of the Russian Federation), he should still be denied, since there is a ban on conclusion of a PCA with a minor. The author believes that this ban is impractical, since law enforcement agencies are deprived of a powerful means of combating organized crime. Another weighty argument in favor of allowing the conclusion of a PCA with a minor is the foreign practice of concluding such agreements, which is widely used in criminal proceedings in foreign countries both near and far abroad. Due to the inability to conclude a PCA with a minor, first of all, the interests of the latter suffer, since it is impossible to provide mitigation of punishment by other available legal means, as in the case of concluding a PCA.