Norms for ensuring the protection of criminal justice bodies’ activities in the Declaration on the police

Abstract

Abstract. The article provides a comprehensive analysis of international legal standards for ensuring the protection of criminal justice bodies’ activities, particularly through the lens of the 1979 Declaration on the Police. The study examines the specifics of criminal law regulation in the European Union, where there is no clear division between criminal law, criminal procedure, and penitentiary law, but rather the concept of a unified criminal justice environment is used. The author analyzes key international documents that define standards for law enforcement activities, with special focus on the provisions of the Declaration on the Police. It is revealed that this document contains a significant number of norms related to the protection of police officers and their activities in general. The following aspects are examined in detail: equating the status of police officers to civil servants; protection from executing illegal orders; regulation of weapons use; the right to moral and physical support from society; ensuring proper professional, psychological, and material conditions of service; procedural guarantees in disciplinary or criminal proceedings; the right to appeal decisions to an independent body or court; issues of fair remuneration taking into account special risk factors. Special attention is paid to the interaction between different groups of criminal justice bodies, particularly between law enforcement agencies and the bar, as well as between different subsystems of crime-fighting policy. The necessity of developing the corresponding direction of criminal law ideology to ensure public support for law enforcement work is substantiated.