The legislative transformation of applying pledge in criminal proceedings

Introduction. Among the measures of restraint requiring a court decision, the most frequentlychosen measures are detention, house arrest, and the prohibition of certain actions. Thus, according to the Judicial Department at the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation, in the first half of 2022, the courts elected: detention - 23,767 times; house arrest - 3,746 times; prohibition of certain actions - 1457 times; bail - 53 times. We can conclude that the courts are many times less likely to choose pledge than other preventive measures. “The percent of pledge among all measures of restraint chosen by the court is on average less than 0.2% for the same period.” The unwillingness of the courts to apply this measure of restraint is also associated with the difficulties of accepting and documenting movable and immovable property. The purpose of the study is to make proposals related to the legislative transformation of the use of individual property objects (real estate, securities, values, etc.) as a subject of pledge in a criminal case when choosing a measure of restraint for the accused. The objectives of the study are to consider the types and amount of pledge selected for the accused as a measure of restraint and to characterize the problems that are an obstacle to the use of property that may be the subject of pledge. Methods. The methodological framework for the study is the general scientific method of cognition, whereby the authors have formulated the approaches caused by the increase in importance of using pledge for the suspect and the accused at the stage of preliminary investigation. Results. The authors’ position is that the main property object used as collateral is cash. Conclusions. Real estate as collateral is not an easy task for the pledger, investigator, and court, associated with the submission and verification of documents, determining the value of propertyby attracting a specialist appraiser, as well as transferring it to storage and ensuring its safety; real estate is not used as a subject of the pledge, and when the accused applies for it, it is easier for the court to refuse to satisfy such a petition than to take measures to formalize this subject of the pledge.