The article is devoted to the problem of preventing criminal offenses against a witness as a participant in criminal proceedings in the context of ensuring his safety in criminal proceedings, thus, based on the study of the experience of certain foreign countries in solving a larger problem in criminal proceedings, it was established that the key feature of the procedural status of a witness, which distinguishes him from other participants in criminal proceedings, in particular the victim, suspect, accused, there is a statutory obligation to provide independent, impartial testimony on the merits of the criminal proceedings. However, this duty of the state witness must be confirmed by appropriate guarantees of his safety.
In order to determine the essence of the witness as a subject of criminal proceedings and as a carrier of evidentiary information in criminal proceedings, a theoretical analysis of the scientific positions of individual scientists regarding the purpose and basis of witness protection and security is carried out, as well as the norms of criminal and criminal procedural legislation in force in Ukraine are analyzed, which fasten norms for ensuring protection and security of testimony as a participant in criminal proceedings. Separately, the analysis of positive experience for Ukraine of some foreign states in building systems of protection and ensuring the safety of witnesses to prevent criminal offenses against him as a participant in criminal proceedings is given.
The use of international experience is invaluable for the urgent need to improve the institution of witness immunity and its protection in Ukraine. However, at the moment, there is no witness protection system in Ukraine as such, except that employees of the national police and SBU provide personal protection when necessary. Also, back in 1993, a law protecting witnesses was adopted, but it does not really work and is already hopelessly out of date, it should either be updated or replaced with a new one. A proposal was made about the need to create a witness protection service of NABU in Ukraine, similar in terms of independence, which helped to avoid competition among law enforcement agencies.
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