Prosecutorial Supervision Over Ensuring the Completeness of Establishing Circumstances Characterizing the Personality of a Minor

This article examines one of the key problems of modern criminal proceedings — ensuring the completeness and reliability of establishing the circumstances characterizing the personality of a minor suspect or accused. Taking into account global trends in the humanization of justice, the paper substantiates the priority of sociopedagogical study of living conditions and the level of mental development of a teenager over formal legal qualification of the act. The methodological foundation of the study is the formal-legal method and a systemic approach, which allowed comparing the norms of criminal procedural legislation with departmental regulations of the Prosecutor General’s Office of the Russian Federation. The empirical basis of the work is formed by current statistical data from the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia, the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation, and materials of regional judicial practice for the period from 2014 to 2025. The results of the analysis allow us to state the presence of a profound systemic contradiction in law enforcement activity, defined by the author as «destructive documentary formalism.» It is established that in practice, a comprehensive understanding of the offender’s personality is often replaced by the mechanical accumulation of formalized reports that do not reflect the real determinants of criminal behavior. As part of the discussion of the results, the author’s concept of «digital and psychological profiling» is introduced, aimed at establishing the real «social age» and level of socialization of a minor through the analysis of their activity in information and telecommunications networks. It is proved that the investigator’s disregard for significant discrepancies between official documents and primary data from the inspection of electronic media indicates a qualitative incompleteness of the preliminary investigation. In conclusion, specific proposals are formulated to improve departmental regulation by introducing amendments to the Orders of the Prosecutor General of the Russian Federation № 544 and № 744. The proposed innovations are aimed at creating a procedural filter and implementing a mandatory data verification methodology, which will provide the court with reliable information for individualized responsibility and recidivism prevention.