Preliminary Investigation of Crimes Against Personal Liberty: Algorithms for Resolving Investigative Issues

Crimes against personal liberty are numerous and latent in nature. As a result, investigators should rely on scientific recommendations as early as at the preliminary stage of investigation because the procedural means of preliminary verification of crime reports have increased in number. The article describes judicial and investigative practice of investigation of crimes against personal liberty, as well as issues of investigative verification that arise at the preliminary stage. The research covered the following situations: a) the offence report was filed by relatives or witnesses (31.9%); b) information about the crime surfaced as a result of investigative measures (21.8%); c) the crime report was filed by the victim (44.2%). A set of systematic and activity-based approaches combined with standard research methods made it possible to conclude that the abovementioned situations require consistent and scientific algorithms for a legitimate and informed decision to be made in line with Article 145 of the Code of Criminal Procedure of the Russian Federation. In the first case, the algorithm is aimed at obtaining billing data from relatives and witnesses. The second verification situation requires an operational experiment. The third situation requires a set of investigative actions and search measures based on the information received from the victim.