International scientific and practical conference «Conciliation in criminal proceedings»

On 7 December 2018, the chair of law of Institute of history and law of Abai Kazakh national pedagogical university held a scientific and practical conference «Conciliation in criminal proceedings: methodological and applied aspects within the framework of legal policy new priorities of the Republic of Kazakhstan amidst of the Constitutional Reform of 2017».

The procedural agreement application, being a novelty for the criminal process of Kazakhstan, in general, in the world practice, refers to tried institutions. The perception of an effective way to resolve conflicts by the national system of law is evaluated as a significant step in the improvement of sectoral law. It would seem that a new way was found to achieve the full humanization of the criminal and criminal procedure branches of law. In general, undoubtedly, significant results have been achieved, which testify to the real entry of Kazakhstan into the global legal space in the considered part.

However, things are not so simple. The fact is that the mechanical inclusion of an initially alien institution into the well-established national structure of the criminal process inevitably leads to the formation of provisions that can be assessed as a legal contradiction. One of the reasons for this kind of consequences is that the system of principles has remained unchanged since the time of the CPC RK 1997. With reference to the Code of Criminal Procedure of 2014 (entered into force on 01.01.2015) it should be noted that the rules on mediation and procedural agreement are based on the principle of disposition, which is not in the existing criminal procedure law. This is one of the grounds for the statement that both, mediation and procedural agreement do not fall within the established principles of judicial procedure and the resolution of the question of their legality is seen in the perception of a new principle regulating the new relations under study. In the literature, it is proposed to introduce a special principle under the conditional name «the principle of expediency» in order to remove the contradictions that impede the practical application of the rules on mediation and procedural agreement.

The accentuated and other cases were taken into account, when determining the main direction of this conference, which is organized as part of a fundamental research, carried out on the basis of a grant from the MES of RK on the topic: «Conciliation in criminal proceedings: methodological and applied aspects within the framework of legal policy new priorities of the Republic of Kazakhstan amidst of the Constitutional Reform of 2017» (study period: 2018-2020.)