Review of incident reports received by territorial divisions of internal affairs agencies: the need and possibility of improvement

The subject of this study is the work of internal affairs officials in reviewing incoming incident reports that do not contain elements of a crime, for the subsequent decision to include the incident report and its review materials in the nomenclature file attached to the register of applications and reports of crimes, administrative offenses, and incidents. This study examines the need to improve the procedure for reviewing incident reports received by territorial divisions of internal affairs agencies that do not contain information on the elements of a crime, taking into account current conditions characterized by a significant number of citizen complaints and staffing shortages within internal affairs agencies. The objective of the study is to develop proposals for optimizing the procedure for reviewing incident reports that do not contain elements of a crime. The methodological basis of this work is formed by a group of general scientific and specialized methods, including dialectical, formal-legal, statistical, sociological, predictive, as well as induction and deduction. Scope of application of the results, novelty. It is proposed to exclude investigators from reviewing incident reports received by internal affairs agencies that lack data indicating elements of a crime. The optimal reviewers for incident reports lacking elements of a crime are identified. The tools and procedures for reviewing incident reports lacking elements of a crime, as stipulated by departmental legal regulation based on criminal procedure legislation, are proposed. These procedures are intended to facilitate the subsequent decision on including the incident report and its review materials in the nomenclature file attached to the register of applications and reports of crimes, administrative offenses, and incidents. These proposals do not require changes to criminal procedure legislation, are consistent with departmental regulations, are in line with current realities, and may also harmonize existing practices.