Problems of normative regulation of special chemicalsuse and safety in operational detective activities

Introduction. Special chemical substances are actively and variously used in law enforcement in general and in operational detective activities in particular for a very long period of time.At the same time, the legal situation is complicated by the fact that, despite the long and effective use of special chemicals in practical activities of law enforcement and operational units, Russian science and law enforcement practice still do not have the unified and legitimate concept of “special chemical substances” as well as the official legal criteria for the safety of their use, and the scientific community has not yet finally and irrevocably determined what special chemicals belong to. Under these conditions, both legislation and law enforcement practice need a scientifically substantiated conceptual and categorical apparatus and legally established criteria for legitimate and safe use of special chemicals of operational detective designation. Methods. The study applied general scientific dialectical, comparative-legal, formal-logical methods and the method of content analysis. This allowed identifying evidence of normative legal deficit in terms of regulation of lawful and safe use of special chemicals of operational detective designation in prevention, suppression and detection of crimes, and search for criminals. Results. Based on the results of the conducted Russian legislation analysis and numerous previous scientific researches by other legal scholars, the author comes to the reasonable conclusion that at present the legislative regulation of the use and safety of special chemicals of operational detective designation is normatively emasculated and needs immediate replenishment in terms of the normative definition of the basic concepts and requirements for special chemical substances. The author proposes authentic definition of “special chemical substance” concept that takes into account the requirements for its safety.