The concept and essence of the rehabilitation in the modern criminal process of Russia

The subject of the study is the concept of rehabilitation in the modern criminal process of Russia. The author notes the lack of a unified approach among scholars to understanding the essence and content of rehabilitation. An analysis of the scientific literature allows for the identification of four main approaches to understanding rehabilitation among scholars: 1) the acknowledgment of a person as innocent of committing a crime, 2) the actual compensation for harm and the restoration of the person's rights, 3) the recognition of a person as innocent of committing a crime and a system of guarantees ensuring the compensation for harm and the restoration of the person's rights, 4) the acknowledgement of a person as innocent of committing a crime, as well as the actual compensation for harm and the restoration of the person's rights. The author examines the arguments of representatives of each of the approaches and concludes that the last approach is the most successful. The article also states that the characteristics of the legal definition of rehabilitation are formulated, on one hand, too broadly, for example, regarding the provision of the right to rehabilitation to any person unlawfully and/or unjustifiably subjected to criminal prosecution, while on the other hand, they require important additions, such as mentioning the illegal and/or unjustified actions of the court as one of the reasons for the emergence of the right to rehabilitation. The methodological basis of the study consists of general scientific methods of analysis and synthesis, induction and deduction, as well as a special formal-legal method. The result of the study is the author's definition of the concept of "rehabilitation," which, in the author's opinion, reflects all the essential features of the specified legal phenomenon: rehabilitation is the restoration of honor, dignity, business reputation, and good name of a person whose innocence in committing a crime is confirmed by a court sentence, or a person for whom the prosecution has established the absence of grounds for continuing criminal prosecution, as well as compensation for such a person's property and moral damage caused by unlawful and/or unjustified criminal prosecution, judicial decisions (intermediate and/or final), and their restoration in labor, pension, housing, and other rights. The definition formulated by the author is completely original and can be used to improve the existing criminal procedural legislation.