Guarantees of protection of the right of minors during their interrogation on the pre-examination investigation
Authors: Povzyk Eugene 
Published: December 2021

Problem setting. One of the tasks of criminal proceedings is to protect the rights and legitimate interests of participants in criminal proceedings. Additional guarantees should be created for juvenile participants in criminal proceedings, taking into account their age, physical and psychological characteristics, taking into account the principle of the best protection of the interests of the child enshrined in Article 3 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. However, despite significant scientific developments in the issue of guarantees for the protection of the rights of minors and the relevant regulatory support, there are still difficulties in law enforcement on this issue, which, in turn, requires scientific analysis.

The state of research of the problem. Issues related to proceedings involving minors are the work of many procedural scientists: I.V. Glovyuk, Y. M. Groshevoy, Z.Z. Zinatullina, O.P. Kuchinskaya, L.M. Loboyko, V. T. Nora, M.A. Pogoretsky, V.V. Romanyuk, S.M. Smokova, L.D. Udalova, O.G. Shilo, D.O. Shingarev and others.

The purpose of the scientific article is to study the guarantees of protection of the rights of minors and juveniles during their interrogation in the pre-trial investigation and to develop proposals based on it to improve the current criminal procedure legislation.

Article’s main body. The research is devoted to determining the status of a minor in criminal proceedings, features of interrogation with his participation, analysis of additional guarantees of protection of his rights and interests during interrogation, features of specialization of subjects of such investigative (search) action and requirements to other participants of interrogation. It is noted that at the stage of pre-trial investigation, the method of interrogation of a minor is effective - "Green Room." This technique is developed to introduce the best experience of interrogation of the child, when the child is not injured and provide an opportunity to collect all the necessary evidence in criminal proceedings. It is stated that despite the positive impact of this technique,
cases of interrogation of the child by the "Green Room" method are not frequent, given the small number of such "Green Rooms," and, therefore, the significant remoteness of law enforcement agencies from such specially equipped premises.

The scientific novelty of the study is to make suggestions for improving the current criminal procedure legislation, which relate to the application of additional guarantees for the protection of the rights of minors, specialization of juvenile prosecutors, mandatory participants in the interrogation of minors.

Conclusions. Among scientists and practitioners, the issue of mandatory and conditionally mandatory participants of interrogation of a minor listed in Part 1 of Article 226 of the CPC of Ukraine remains debatable. In our opinion, it is appropriate to apply to the motivational part of the Resolution of the United Chamber of the Cassation Criminal Court of the Supreme Court of 18.11.2019. resolution of the scope of documents confirming the authority of the defender to participate in a particular criminal proceeding (listed in Art. 50 of the CPC of Ukraine). The resolution states that: … para. 2 of Part 1 of Article 50 of the CPC is formulated using a syntactic construction in which homogeneous members of the sentence, namely: "order," "contract" and "errands," are connected by a relentless separation, and between the last two used a connector "or," which clearly indicates an alternative list, that is, the possibility of choosing one of the three mentioned in In addition, if such a list presents the conditions for the occurrence of a certain legal consequence, the use of a separating connector "or" indicates that the consequence occurs in the presence of at least one of the listed conditions.... ". Thus, taking into account such a syntactic design, formulated in part 1 of Article 226 of the CPC of Ukraine, we consider it mandatory to interrogate a minor or legal representative, or teacher, or psychologist, and conditionally mandatory - a doctor (if necessary).