RESTRICTION OF THE ACCUSED’S RIGHT TO TELEPHONE CALLS AND MEETINGS WITH RELATIVES AND OTHER PERSONS AS A SUBJECT OF JUDICIAL CONTROL

Abstract

The article examines the problem of the restriction of the accused person’s right to telephone calls and visits with relatives and other persons as a subject of judicial control. There is a contradiction between the constitutional guarantees of the right to family life and the current practice whereby the exercise of this right is made dependent on the discretion of the investigator that often leads to unjustified refusals. The purpose of the study is to identify legal issues in judicial control over the investigator’s decisions to deny visits and telephone calls and to assess whether existing practice conforms to constitutional principles and the requirements of criminal procedure legislation. To achieve this objective the formal-legal method is used in analyzing the norms of the Constitution of the Russian Federation, the Criminal Procedure Code of the Russian Federation and the Federal Law “On Detention under Custody”; the comparative-legal method is employed in comparing legislative regulation with the legal positions of the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation; the method of judicial practice analysis is applied in studying court decisions on complaints filed under Article 125 of the Criminal Procedure Code of the Russian Federation. It is established that the existing model of restricting the accused’s right to visits and telephone calls is predominantly formalistic and fails to ensure adequate protection of the right to family life. The article substantiates the need for statutory codification of exhaustive grounds for refusal, strengthening the standard of judicial control, imposing on the investigator the duty to prove specific risks and establishing a presumption of visits’ admissibility in the absence of lawful grounds for their restriction.