Combating crime in Ukraine in the mid-1960s: experience, lessons

The article is devoted to the study of the activities of law enforcement agencies in combating criminal crime in the mid-1960s. At that time, there was a change of political power in the USSR and the search for a new paradigm of the organization and activity of internal affairs bodies was underway. It should be noted that the level of crime in the mid-1960s remained quite high, although officially the indicators of solving crimes improved. There was a significant number of such crimes as: serious bodily injury; rape; theft of personal property; fraud; hooliganism. The Ministry of Public Order Protection took measures to improve the quality of agent-operational work in the field of prevention and detection of criminal crimes, the agent apparatus was reviewed with the aim of replacing it with a more efficient one; the fight against brothels, prostitution and drug addiction was intensified. At the same time, numerous facts of legal violations committed by police officers during the guarding and escorting of the arrested were established. The facts were established when individual police officers put citizens in a pre-trial detention cell without any grounds and, on the contrary, did not take measures to immediately detain and incarcerate persons suspected of committing crimes. There was an unsatisfactory organization of inspections of the places of events and inept conduct of the initial operational search and investigative actions. In some line police bodies, in relation to persons who were constantly engaged in vagrancy and did not have a permanent place of residence, they were often limited to issuing pretexts and official warnings, unreasonably dismissing them and thereby giving them the opportunity to continue to lead a vagrant lifestyle. Taking into account that many more crimes were committed by previously convicted persons, this type of record was introduced as an observational case to study the behavior of persons with previous convictions who harbored criminal intentions. Work was carried out to strengthen the personnel of precinct commissioners, and special training was organized at district police departments to improve their qualifications in the operational aspect.

Ukraine, the 1960s, the Ministry of Public Order Protection, the police, crime prevention