LOWERING THE AGE OF CRIMINAL RESPONSIBILITY

Introduction: this article aims to determine the further promising development of the legal institution of the age of criminal responsibility, taking into account the satisfaction of the needs of participants in legal relations, as well as modern features of the rapid maturation of children. Materials and Methods: during the preparation of the article, the dialectical method of cognition of socio-legal and moral phenomena was used, in the process of presenting the article – comparative legal (allowed to compare the current legal norms and the results of their implementation in practice), dogmatic (helped to formulate new norms of law), statistical (through it, qualitative and quantitative indicators for the last). Literature review: as part of the preparation of the article, the opinions of scientific researchers, leading processualists, as well as practical employees of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia were analyzed. Results: the author proposes to conduct a comprehensive study of the issues related to the establishment of the age of criminal responsibility. This need is explained by the fact that the criminal, criminal procedural fundamental provisions rooted in the last century do not contribute to the optimization of legal proceedings, therefore, the effectiveness of some legislative norms is questioned, as well as to abandon the fixed age of criminal responsibility, but with preservation as a certain age limit, after which it is possible to apply "adults" to a person types of punishment, 16 years (for certain crimes – 14 years). Discussion and Conclusions: in order to level out the problems identified during the study of the Institute of the age of criminal responsibility, proposals have been formulated to optimize the current legislation, introduce amendments and additions.