Legal Analysis of the Main Functions of Military Police in Foreign Countries

In this article, based on the analysis of the increase in the number of war crimes in times of war, armed conflicts, which is an urgent threat to the security of the State, and also with a view to substantiating the need to reform the system of law enforcement agencies in the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU), the author analyzes the foreign experience of organizing the activities of military police in the USA, France, Great Britain, Germany and other countries. The author summarizes the existence in each analyzed country of a certain set of laws which describes all types of offenses, crimes arising in the course of social and interpersonal relations, and determines the punishment for them. The author analyzes the main functions of military police in foreign countries. The author emphasizes the model of the military police as an independent body in the military justice system of different countries of the world, the specifics of which are formed by different historical conditions and time frames, and whose activities are of significant practical and theoretical interest for the state administration. The author separately analyzes the experience of the Republic of Kazakhstan as a post-Soviet country where the military police is established to ensure law and order in the armed forces, prevent, detect and stop military offenses and crimes, and acts as a regular military inquiry body with a vertical structure and a single leadership. The author identifies common features and functions of military police: registration and description of offenses, prevention of crimes among military personnel, investigation of crimes committed by them, and performance of certain functions of commandant's units. Attention is drawn to the need to reform the Military Law Enforcement Service of the Armed Forces of Ukraine into a military police force, taking into account the standards of NATO member states in this area. The expediency of this reform within the framework of the overall reform of the Armed Forces of Ukraine is provided.