The Use of Information on a Person's Ethnical Features in the Implementation of Crime Counteraction Strategies

Abstract

The paper discusses the development of a research basis for using the information on ethnical features of a person in crime counteraction. Being part of an ethnos, ethic community is a universal feature of any person: there are no people without ethnic roots. At the same time, the process of ethnic identification is not determined by birth alone, but also by a conscious recognition of oneself as belonging to a certain ethnos (for example, when an adopted child belongs to a genetically different ethnos, in cases of inter-racial marriages or transgression — a conscious transition from one ethnos to another). Ethnos has a considerable impact on personality development in the process of socialization — the internalization of social and cultural norms. Being a natural environment for the life of Homo sapiens, ethnos acts as a social group that determines the lifestyle, values, mindset, rituals, traditions, and interaction practices for its members, specific features of mentality, behavior, and language as a dominant tool of communication. All these basic elements are internalized by a person in the process of ethnization — forming specific value and moral judgments, esthetic views, acquiring a complex of skills, communication style and general behavior typical for the ethnos. The values, motives, skills, habits and thought patterns acquired and internalized during ethnization are stable, basic and determine both the features and characteristics of a person as well as any activity a person is involved in, including the commitment and the perception of a crime. The crimina­listic theory of personality traditionally studies the features and qualities of a person reflected in committing crimes with the goal of identifying regularities that would make it possible to develop effective means and methods of revealing, investigating and solving crimes. Studying the ethnic characteristics of personality is necessary for determining and examining specific elements of the crime mechanism, for creating the information basis for the development of tactical techniques of organizing and conducting investigative and procedural actions, as well as for the improvement of criminalistic support of crime counteraction measures.