Review

Currently a number of pending issues have accumulated regarding the work of the operational units of the law enforcement agencies of Ukraine, which significantly reduce the effectiveness of their activities. These are, first of all, issues of legal regulation. Some are relate to the prevention of criminal offenses, detection and crimes counteraction by operational units. While the others issues are related to the participation of operational units in criminal proceedings. Given that, the first are due to gaps and collisions in the Law of Ukraine “On operational investigative activity”, and the second are imperfection of provisions of the Criminal Procedure Code of Ukraine. But there is also a third group of issues. They are related to the fact that the activities of the same subject of crime counteraction (operational units), which provides for the use of identical methods and means, are legally delimited in different spheres of state and legal activities (operational investigative activity and criminal process) and are regulated by separate regulatory legal acts.  The provisions of these acts on the activities of operational units are not sufficiently coordinated, unbalanced and require improvement. The accomplishment of this task is impossible without an understanding of the meaning of the activities of the operational units as subjects of crime counteraction, and this determines the relevance of this study.

The purpose of this article is to determine the theoretical basis of the legal status and content of the activities of the operational units of the law enforcement agencies of Ukraine as subjects of crime counteraction; to make proposals for improving the legal regulation of the status of operational units and the functions assigned to them.

The main results of the study is the formulation of proposals aimed at identifying ways to improve the legal regulation of the status and content of the activities of the operational units of law enforcement agencies of Ukraine. In particular, the proposed to introduce into legislation the definition of the concept of operational units as subjects, in accordance with the legislation of Ukraine, authorized to conduct operational investigative activities and function as part of law enforcement agencies, defined in Art.38 of the Criminal Procedure Code of Ukraine. In these conditions, it is necessary to legislate their classification, according to which these units will be divided into open (official) and covert. Open operational units operate as part of pre-trial investigation bodies, covert ones as part of a law enforcement agency, to which a pre-trial investigation body belongs, specializing in carrying out specific covert investigative (search) actions and similar operational investigative measures.

The practical implementation of the proposals will make it possible to equally effectively use the forces and means of operational units for: crimes prevention (activity that prevents the formation of the intention to commit crimes and (or) does not allow its realization, even in the form of preparation or an attempt to commit these crimes); crimes detection (activities on investigating and recording information about preparation for a crime; attempting to commit a crime; committing a completed crime); crimes suppression (the activity on preventing a crime that has already begun (including obstructing the preparation, attempt, and completion of the crime); crime investigation (the process of knowledge by the prosecution of the fact and circumstances of the commission of a particular action during the pre-trial investigation, which is embodied in the system of procedural actions used to accomplish the tasks of the criminal proceedings in general).

Key words: operational units, operational investigative activity, criminal proceeding, pre-trial investigation, crime counteraction.