Law Journal of the National Academy of Internal Affairs

The purpose of the research is to identify the ways to minimize the procedural violations which lead to the impossibility of usage the factual data, obtained while conducting visual surveillance, as such ones, that cannot be recognized as admissible evidence in the criminal proceedings. Methodology. The methodological toolkit is chosen taking into account the purpose, the specifics of the object and the subject of the study. Its basis is general dialectical method of scientific cognition of real phenomena and also their connections with practical activity of the operative-search units and bodies of pre-trial investigation. Special methods of research, used in the article, are the methods of systematic analysis, comparative-legal and modelling ones. With the aim of evaluation of the research’s results the questionnaires of 200 operative workers, 200 investigators and 200 advocates (in Vinnitsa, Kyiv, Poltava, Kherson regions and in KyivCity) are held. The theoretical basis of the study is performed by the latest studies of native and foreign scientists who work in this specific field. Scientific novelty is contained in the development of the theoretical provisions as to the determination of: the main features of the inadmissibility of evidence, obtained while conducting visual surveillance of a person, a thing or a place; the most serious and typical violations of the procedural order of conducting such a surveillance, which give reasonable grounds for declaring the evidence obtained, inadmissible. Conclusions. The prosecution representatives’ violations of the legislator’s demands as to the procedural order of conducting visual surveillance of a person, a thing or a place, which lead to the inadmissibility of the received evidence, are grounded as by the subjective so by the objective factors. The subjective factors are related to the misunderstanding or deliberate ignorance of the content of certain norms of the CPC of Ukraine by prosecutors, investigators, employees of operative units (as well as by the drafters of the normative-legal acts). The objective factors are connected with the imperfection of certain norms of the Criminal Procedure Law, which do not facilitate the execution of criminal proceeding tasks but, on the contrary, often lead to the impossibility of prosecution of the persons who have committed criminal offences. The propositions as to the ways of such a situation’s improvement are made.