NEGATIVE CIRCUMSTANCES AND THEIR SIGNIFICANCE FOR ESTABLISHING SCENES OF CRIMES

Abstract

The article draws attention to the unsatisfactory state of crime counteraction in modern conditions, in particular, its gradual growth and decrease in the level of solving, which may indicate the active use of forms of counteraction to the investigation, one of which is faking. It is noted that the information and cognitive process of solving a crime is associated with finding its traces (reflections) in the environment and obtaining information from them. In some cases, there is a situation when information about some circumstances of a crime is not consistent with others. In theory and practice, they are called ‘negative’, but in Ukrainian it is better to refer to them as negative, which has been pointed out by scholars and therefore proposed to be used in the future. It should be noted that such circumstances can be established by the investigator in the process of analysing, evaluating and interpreting information obtained from various sources, including verbal information during interrogations. Having analysed the opinions of scholars on the definition of negative (denial) circumstances as facts or factual data about them that contradict the investigator's understanding of the mechanism of the crime, some clarifications are made. The established facts contradict each other, but not the mechanism of the crime under investigation. The task of the investigator is to find traces of the crime, to interpret them correctly, to put forward the correct version and to provide the necessary means for its verification. The conclusions provide a clarification of the definition of objectionable circumstances and draw attention to their importance for establishing such a method of counteracting the investigation as staging a crime.