Administrative Prejudice as a Special Legal Tool and Expanding its Use in the Criminal Code of Russia
The paper analyzes the increase in the number of criminal law prohibitions, constructed using ad- ministrative prejudice as a trend in the Russian Federation Сriminal Code. Currently, the Special part of the Code contains nine articles with such prohibitions. According to the author, all the introduced criminal law prohibitions with administrative prejudice differ in their design features. The implementation of some of them causes serious difficulties in law enforcement practice. It is concluded that the use of administrative prejudice in the design of criminal law prohibitions should be scientifically substantiated. Besides, along with the practical problems of applying the relevant criminal law prohibitions, there is a problem of the administrative prejudice interpretation. In the doctrine of criminal law, some scholars in determining administrative prejudice attempt to create only the concepts of criminal law (sectoral) concepts, other scholars use mostly theoretical constructs. Defining adminis- trative prejudice, scientists also interpret differently its legal nature and essence. Some of them see it as a phenomenon exclusively of law enforcement practice, others tract it primarily as a phenom- enon of legal (legislative) techniques. Administrative prejudice is defined by the concept of prejudicially (legal) relationship, specific relationship, part of the process of proof, legal rule, a special way of verifying facts, a legal technique etc. From the point of view of author, the best solution is considering this legal phenomenon as a special means of legal techniques along with legal axioms, presumptions and fictions. This interpretation of administrative prejudice reflects its specificity in a narrow sectoral sense. Besides, this legal phenomenon can be defined in a broader sense, reflecting primarily its cross-sectoral nature of the position legal (criminal) policy. From the position of the approach, the scholars point out that administrative prejudice is a special relationship of criminal and administrative law, means of criminalization and decriminalization, means of preventing crimes, means of combating criminality, etc.