Chapter 1 Methodological foundations of legal psychology § 1. Subject and tasks of legal psychology Legal psychology studies the psychological aspects of law, legal regulation and legal activity, explores the problems of increasing efficiency

§ 1. Subject and tasks of legal psychology Legal psychology studies the psychological aspects of law, legal regulation and legal activity, explores the problems of increasing the efficiency of lawmaking, law enforcement, law enforcement and

§ 2. System (structure) of legal psychology Legal psychology has its own methodology and system of categories (thesaurus). It consists of a number of sections, each of which has a corresponding substructure.1. Methodological foundations of legal psychology:

Chapter 2 HISTORY OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF LEGAL PSYCHOLOGY Legal psychology is one of the relatively young branches of psychological science. The first attempts to systematically solve some problems of jurisprudence using psychological methods date back to the 18th century. In the history of legal

2.1. Early history of legal psychology Like most new sciences that arose at the intersection of various branches of knowledge, legal psychology in the first stages of its development was not independent and did not have special personnel. Related to this discipline

2.2. Formation of legal psychology as a science. The end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries. associated with the intensive development of psychology, psychiatry and a number of legal disciplines (primarily criminal law). A number of scientists representing these sciences at that time occupied progressive

2.3. History of legal psychology in the 20th century. End of the 19th - beginning of the 20th century. characterized by the sociologization of criminological knowledge. The causes of crime as a social phenomenon began to be studied by sociologists J. Quetelet, E. Durkheim, P. Dupoty, M. Weber, L. Lévy-Bruhl and others, who,

Chapter 3 METHODS OF LEGAL PSYCHOLOGY 3.1. Methodological foundations Each science has its own subject and corresponding research methods. However, regardless of what area the research is being conducted, certain requirements are imposed on scientific methods:?

11.1. Problems of minors in legal psychology Juvenile crime is caused by the mutual influence of negative environmental factors and the personality of the minor himself. Most often, crimes are committed by the so-called “difficult”

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The work of a practical lawyer involves daily contacts with people, during which conclusions are drawn about people’s character traits, their behavior and habits, and guesses about the motives of their actions.

Legal psychology is a branch of social psychology, which takes as its subject of study the psychological characteristics of activities directly related to criminal and constitutional human rights.

Legal psychology helps to analyze human behavior, his hidden motives, attitudes, and personal characteristics that are important for the competent and correct work of a lawyer. Knowing mental patterns, a lawyer not only understands the mental activity of the defendant, but also controls it. Self-improvement of one’s personality, re-education of a criminal, overcoming resistance to investigation from perjury - all this is included in the field of legal psychology.

In legal psychology, the object is the human psyche in terms of interaction with the law. The subject is allocated in accordance with the conditions and reasons for the study. It can be either the psychological state of the subject or his individual characteristics. Legal psychology is constantly developing, establishing connections with other sciences, and identifying new areas of legal psychology.

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Most psychologists do not deny that solving a creative problem intuitively occurs unconsciously or subconsciously. (It is more correct to assume that intuition appears in the sphere of the subconscious, and not the unconscious. The sphere of the unconscious is simpler (elementary feelings, attitudes). In the sphere of the subconscious, processes take place that have a decisive influence on the course of an individual’s conscious life.

An intuitive decision appears under certain conditions.

1. If there is a situation of intense search (search activity) of the investigator.

This situation is expressed in parallel in two spheres: emotional and mental. The investigator is somewhat excited during the search (emotional sphere). He seeks to relieve this excitement caused by the search dominant, with the help of a thought process aimed at solving a problem situation (mental sphere). It is the search activity of the investigator that determines the peculiarity of subsequent orientation in a situation when an unconscious product is encountered (i.e., when a prompt situation occurs) and the correct version of the case is put forward.

The most favorable conditions for the correct solution of the case arise at the moment when the investigator has gone through all possible options in the case, but has not yet reached the stage at which the search dominant goes out. The main condition here is dedication and perseverance, passion for the work.

2. “It turned out that the more you saturate the content of the direct product of action in a prompt situation, the more you interest the subject in this, the less possible it is to solve the problem.”

In terms of the investigator’s creativity, this means the following: the less meaningful the direct goal of the action, in which the investigator encounters an unconscious product that objectively contains the key to solving the problem, is the more likely the intuitive solution.

3. The success of solving a problem depends “on the degree of automation of the method of action by which the hint was carried out. The less automated this method was, the better the problem was solved.”

You are more likely to come across an intuitive solution when doing something unusual.

Another condition for the emergence of intellectual intuition is preliminary simplification of the problem.

Outwardly, the intuitive process proceeds so quickly that its individual stages merge into a single, continuously flowing cognitive act, in which, unless it is specially analyzed, it is impossible to distinguish the transition from one stage to another.

Intuition is a rapid transition from one statement to another, sometimes with such rapid skipping of individual links of reasoning that premises and intermediate processes are not isolated, although with a careful restoration of the train of thought they could be detected.

The psychological process of the transition of intuition from the subconscious to consciousness occurs in a unique way. When intuition passes into the sphere of consciousness, the subject feels an emotional background (pleasant, depressing, etc.), the content of which is hidden from him. As a result of a purposeful search for the meaning of the emotional background, intuition appears in the sphere of consciousness.

But sometimes the subject, through an effort of will, removes this emotional background. As a result, the transition process may fade, i.e. turn back into the subconscious (for example, with powerful self-hypnosis).

That is why the skill of self-observation and self-knowledge, which is at the same time indirect objective knowledge, is of great importance for the investigator.

Intuition, as part of creative thinking, does not include, but presupposes conscious, discursive thinking, the ability to develop a guess in a system of evidence, find its factual basis, explain the process of its formation, and ultimately discover its correctness or error.

The main purpose of intuition in the investigative process is that it creates hypotheses. It plays an important auxiliary role in the process of proof, but is completely indifferent from the point of view of the final results of this process for making procedural decisions.

From the point of view of formal logic, an investigator, solving (investigating) a complex crime, solves a problem with a huge number of unknowns, which in complexity can be equated to the problem beloved by cybernetics - the cipher of a safe lock with ten disks (each from 0 to 99). It is estimated that to solve this problem in a “formal” way, billions of billions of samples will be required. However, if a bell is attached to the disk, the ringing of which is heard when the disk is in the desired position, solving the problem will require only about 50 trials.

The investigator knows how to “hear” ringing where the average person cannot hear it. At this stage of putting forward versions and selecting evidence, he is characterized by an intuitive, heuristic mindset.

It would be unreasonable to brush aside the investigator’s intuitive guesses if they lead to a more in-depth study of the circumstances of the case.

On the other hand, intuition is a heuristic process and its conclusions are probabilistic in nature.

Topic: Subject and system of legal psychology

The history of psychological research into law enforcement problems goes back about a hundred years. It began with the problems of legal proceedings and with the name “Forensic Psychology”. This situation remained until the 70s, when the science of “Legal Psychology” was officially registered.

The name change was caused by radical changes in the understanding that the psychological problems of strengthening law and order are not limited to the investigation of crimes. A new approach was also forced by the real state of psychological research that took place in law enforcement agencies and went far beyond the scope of traditional problems. Research began on psychological problems of legal education of the population, strengthening the rule of law, working with law enforcement personnel, professional deformation and psychological training of employees, psychological causes of crimes and their prevention, management in law enforcement agencies and operational investigative work, correction of convicts and social rehabilitation of those released from prison freedom, etc. The trend of expanding legal and psychological research continued to strengthen and develop in the 80s in connection with the increasingly acute need of society to strengthen legality and order and an integrated approach to this work.

The urgency of solving the entire complex of psychological problems in the activities of law enforcement agencies acquired particular urgency in the 90s, when the task of creating a rule of law state was declared a task of updating our society, and the crime rate increased sharply, becoming a truly national problem. In response to the needs of practice, research into the problems of legal psychology expanded, and their results were accumulated, which are of undoubted practical interest. However, all this was not sufficiently reflected in publications on legal psychology, accessible to a wide student audience and the corps of law enforcement officers.

Our time is characterized by significant development of psychological science, its penetration into all spheres of human activity, the use of psychological data in solving problems of economic and cultural construction, as well as issues of improving the work of law enforcement agencies and officials, for example, the creation of a professiogram of legal professions. An in-depth study of these issues requires a psychological analysis of personality and legal activity, based on the study of basic psychological phenomena, processes, states, and their characteristics in the legal field (needs, motives, goals, temperament, attitude, social orientation and other characteristics of the individual).

The psychological culture of a lawyer presupposes that all employees of legal bodies have a developed system of psychological knowledge, as well as skills and techniques that ensure a high culture of communication. Psychological culture increases the efficiency of legal activity and contributes to its humanization.

The study of legal psychology is greatly hampered by the lack of scientific and methodological literature on this discipline.

To develop this work, the following goals are set:

consider legal psychology as a branch of psychological science;

reveal the subject, methods, tasks and system of legal psychology;

perform control testing in this discipline.

1. Legal psychology is a branch of psychological science

Psychology is a science that studies the patterns and mechanisms of human mental activity. The name of the science “psychology” comes from the Greek words: “psyche” (soul), “logos” (teaching), that is, the science of the soul, or more precisely, of the inner, subjective world of man. The term "psychology" was proposed by the German scholastic Goclenius at the end of the 16th century.

For a long time, psychology developed as an integral part of philosophy, and only in the middle of the 19th century did it emerge as an independent science. This became possible because psychology gradually transformed from a descriptive science into an experimental science. Currently, psychology is a rather complex and branched system of disciplines. In addition to general psychology, which studies the general laws of mental activity, there are private, applied branches of psychology that exist and are rapidly developing. Thus, the group of applied branches that study the patterns and mechanisms of the psyche of people engaged in specific types of activities consists of: labor psychology and its relatively independent sections - engineering, aviation and space psychology; psychology of cognition; educational, military, legal psychology, etc.

Operational, investigative, prosecutorial and judicial workers constantly face many questions, the solution of which requires not only a broad outlook, legal culture, special knowledge and life experience, but also a good knowledge of legal psychology. In order to correctly understand the complex relationships of people, their experiences and actions, in confusing situations that are reflected in criminal cases, you need to know the laws of mental life.

Legal psychology includes various areas of scientific knowledge, is an applied science and belongs equally to both psychology and jurisprudence. In the field of social relations regulated by legal norms, the mental activity of people acquires unique features that are determined by the specifics of human activity in the field of legal regulation. Psychology is the only science that can provide not only knowledge of mental activity, but also its control. With the development of society, its importance will increase more and more.

The need to turn to psychology, its methods, and achievements arises when a specific science, adjacent to psychology or closely related to it, is included in the solution of practical problems. This occurs in pedagogy, medicine and law. Practical activity, as a rule, is realized in the specific actions of specific people, and how this happens depends largely on their psychological characteristics. Only the need to solve practical problems led to the emergence and development of social, ethnic, historical and other branches of psychology on the border with social science. It would, however, be a downplaying of the role of the natural in the life and development of the individual to turn exclusively to the social aspects of its manifestation. Of course, the study of human biology (anatomy, physiology, anthropology) is inextricably linked with research in the field of psychophysiology, neuropsychology, psychophysics and other sciences bordering on psychology and natural science. - The entire system of scientific knowledge feels the need to use psychological knowledge; it becomes a connecting link between various fields of science. Psychology connects social and natural sciences, biology and history, medicine and pedagogy, management and jurisprudence, etc. This determines its place in the system of scientific knowledge.

The theoretical basis for legal psychology is general psychology, since it uses its conceptual and categorical apparatus, knowledge about the general patterns and laws of human mental activity.

Most legal scholars and psychologists working in this area agree that if psychology, as a fundamental science about the human psyche, studies the most general patterns of mental activity of people in general, then legal psychology studies the same patterns of the human psyche, various mental phenomena, but not in general, but in the sphere of various (criminal, civil, etc.) legal relations or, as they sometimes say, in the “man - law” system.

2. Subject of legal psychology

The modern development of science is characterized, on the one hand, by the differentiation of scientific knowledge, and on the other hand, by integration, the interpenetration of some industries into others. This process leads to the creation of new branches of scientific knowledge that connect previously isolated sciences.

From this point of view, the identification of such a science as legal psychology, which turns out to be a connecting link between the psychological and legal sciences, is a natural phenomenon.

Legal psychology is an applied science that includes both psychology and jurisprudence. The mental sphere of persons associated with legal proceedings and legal activities has a number of psychological characteristics, the nature of which is determined by their performance of many different social and legal functions. The specifics of the mental activity of persons involved in the orbit of legal relations is what legal psychology is designed to study.

Thus, the subject of legal psychology is the study of mental phenomena, mechanisms, and patterns that manifest themselves in the sphere of law.

3. Tasks of legal psychology

Legal psychology as a science sets itself certain tasks that can be divided into general and specific.

The general task of legal psychology is the scientific synthesis of legal and psychological knowledge, the disclosure of the psychological essence of the fundamental categories of law.

Particular tasks of legal psychology relate to the development of recommendations for the most effective implementation of law enforcement activities. These include:

1) study of psychological prerequisites (conditions) for the effectiveness of legal norms;

2) psychological study of the personality of the criminal, disclosure of the motivation for criminal behavior, the specifics of the motivation for certain types of criminal behavior;

3) development of socio-psychological foundations for crime prevention;

4) research into the psychological patterns of various types of law enforcement activities (investigator, prosecutor, lawyer, judge);

5) research into the psychological patterns of the activities of correctional institutions in order to develop a system of measures for the correction and re-education of convicts;

4. Methods of legal psychology

In legal psychology, there is a system of methods for the psychological study of personality, as well as various psychological phenomena that arise in the process of law enforcement activities.

These include the following:

Observation method. The method of observation in psychology is understood as a specially organized, deliberate, purposeful perception by the researcher of various external manifestations of the psyche directly in life, during an investigation, trial and in other areas of law enforcement.

The observation method excludes the use of any techniques that could introduce changes or disturbances in the natural course of the phenomena being studied. Thanks to this, the observation method allows us to understand the phenomenon being studied in its entirety and reliability of its qualitative features.

The subject of observation in psychology is not direct subjective mental experiences, but their manifestations in a person’s actions and behavior, in his speech and activity.

Observation can be: direct and indirect, non-involved and included.

In direct observation, the study is carried out by the person himself, who draws conclusions based on the results of this observation. Such observation is carried out by the investigator and the judge during investigative and judicial actions, the teacher of the correctional institution, etc.

Indirect observation occurs in cases where information is received about observations made by other persons. This type of observation has a peculiarity: its results are always recorded in the case documents - in the protocols of interrogations of other persons, in expert opinions (forensic psychological, forensic psychiatric examinations), etc.

Non-participant observation is observation from the outside, in which the researcher is an outsider to the person or group being studied.

Participant observation is characterized by the fact that the researcher enters a social situation as its participant, without revealing the true motives of his behavior (research). For example, when studying the institution of people's assessors, the method of participant observation was used. It was conducted by a graduate of the Faculty of Law of St. Petersburg University, who had practiced in court. The researcher received a detailed researcher-developed questionnaire relating to the progress of the trial and the deliberation of the judges, which he completed after the end of each case. The questionnaire was anonymous. Official permission to conduct the observation was obtained, but the judges were not informed about the study.

The advantage of participant observation is direct contact with the object of study, registration of events that, with non-participant observation, could be hidden from the eyes of the researcher.

All of the above refers to the method of objective observation. In addition to this, psychological research also uses the method of subjective observation - introspection (self-observation). It consists both in monitoring one’s outwardly expressed activities, psychologically significant facts from life, and in monitoring one’s inner life, one’s mental state.

Conversation method. The goal of psychological research is the deepest possible knowledge of the individual, his inner world, beliefs, aspirations, interests, and attitudes towards various phenomena of social life. In such cases, the method of simple observation turns out to be of little use.

In such cases, the conversation method is successfully used. The essence of this method is a relaxed conversation with people on issues of interest to the researcher (the conversation should not turn into a questionnaire).

The conversation method is largely similar to interrogation, so it has some similar requirements. In particular, a prerequisite for its success is the creation of an atmosphere of ease, which makes it possible to naturally combine a free narrative with answers to specific questions that clarify, complement and control the presentation.

Questionnaire method. This is a survey of a large circle of people using a strictly established form - a questionnaire. The method is based on the anonymity of filling out the questionnaire, which allows you to obtain the most objective data about the processes, facts, and phenomena being studied. The obtained material is subjected to statistical processing and analysis. In the field of legal psychology, the questionnaire method is used quite widely - from the judicial, investigative and correctional spheres of activity to the field of legal implementation.

In parallel with the survey, a “public opinion machine” (telephone survey) is used. Its main advantage is complete anonymity. Thanks to this, subjects give the machine different answers to a number of “critical” questions than in the questionnaires.

A variation of the survey is the interview method. During the interview, a person expresses his opinions regarding certain phenomena, circumstances, and actions. The interview should be conducted according to a clearly defined program. With its help, you can obtain a wide variety of information about the specifics of the activities of law enforcement agencies. Interviewing investigators and operational officers allows you to learn about their professionalism, the difficulties they encounter, their opinion about the causes of crime and ways to reduce it, etc.

To characterize the psychological characteristics of a person, the biographical method is of certain importance. The essence of this method lies in the collection and analysis of biographical materials that shed light on human characteristics and their development. This includes: establishing specific biographical data, analyzing diaries, collecting and comparing the memories of other people, etc.

In its essence, the method of generalizing independent characteristics is close to the biographical method, the purpose of which is to collect data about a person from various sources independent of each other. This method provides rich material that allows one to get the most complete picture of a person through the analysis of opinions expressed by persons with whom the subject was in one relationship or another.

The experimental method is the leading method in psychological science. It is aimed at studying mental phenomena in conditions specially created for this purpose and, in its essence and types, is divided into laboratory and natural experiments.

There is also another type of experimental method that can be used in legal psychology - this is a formative (educational) experiment. It is aimed at studying mental phenomena in the process of education and professional training by introducing the most active teaching methods, including problem-based ones, with the help of which the professionally important qualities of a future legal specialist are formed.

Finally, we can note another type of experimental method - the associative experiment, first proposed by the English psychologist F. Galton and developed by the Austrian scientist C. Jung. Its essence is that the subject is asked to answer each word with the first word that comes to his mind. In all cases, reaction time is taken into account, i.e. the interval between the word and the answer (determining the involvement of the suspect in the commission of a crime).

A variation of the experimental method, used in a narrower range, is the test method. A psychological test, called a test, has long been used to resolve various issues: checking the level of intellectual development, determining the degree of giftedness of children, professional suitability, and identifying personal parameters.

Method for analyzing products of human activity. The products of human activity are valuable objective material that allows us to reveal many features of the human psyche.

Analysis of the products of activity allows us to characterize the characteristics of skills, techniques and methods of work, personality traits expressed in attitude to work, etc. .

Method of psychological analysis of documents. A document in the broad sense of the word (i.e., something that is written down, drawn or depicted in some other way), even if it is not related to law, may contain information of interest to legal psychology. Document analysis is a method that allows you to obtain such information. There are documents of legal significance and documents that are not related to law.

5. System of legal psychology

Legal psychology has its own system of categories, a certain structural organization. The following sections can be distinguished:

1) Methodological section, which includes the subject, objectives, system, methods and history of the development of legal psychology.

2) Legal psychology is a section of legal psychology that studies the psychological aspects of legal implementation, psychological patterns of legal socialization of an individual, as well as psychological flaws leading to defects in legal socialization.

3) Criminal psychology is a section that studies the psychological characteristics of the criminal’s personality, the motivation of both criminal behavior in general and certain types of criminal behavior (violent crime, acquisitive crime, juvenile delinquency), as well as the psychology of criminal groups.

4) Investigative-operational psychology - a section of legal psychology that studies the psychological aspects of solving and investigating crimes.

5) Forensic psychology - a section that studies the psychological aspects of judicial proceedings, the problems of forensic psychological examination.

6) Psychology of correctional activity - a section of legal psychology that studies the psychological aspects of the effectiveness of criminal punishment, psychological problems of the execution of criminal punishment, the psychology of convicts and the psychological foundations of their resocialization and readaptation after serving their sentence.

Conclusion

The current state of psychological science can be assessed as a period of significant growth in its development. Over the past decades, the frontier of psychological research has expanded, and new scientific directions and disciplines have emerged. The range of problems being developed in psychology is growing, and its conceptual apparatus is changing. Research methodology and methods are being improved.

Psychology is continuously enriched with new data, interesting hypotheses and concepts relating to all the main areas of its problems. Psychological science is increasingly involved in solving various problems arising in different areas of social practice.

A complex and multifaceted course in legal psychology is designed to provide lawyers with an understanding of the socio-psychological essence of legal regulation, the psychological characteristics of human behavior in the sphere of relations regulated by law. Legal regulation is objectively determined by social and socio-psychological patterns. Only by synthesizing legal knowledge with knowledge of the psychology of human behavior can a lawyer become a competent specialist.

By studying legal psychology, a lawyer learns the patterns of human interaction with the environment, the features and conditions for the formation of socially adapted and deviant behavior of an individual, and the psychological factors of criminalization of an individual. Legal psychology equips a lawyer with a systematic analysis of the behavior of a criminal, a structural approach to the organization of investigative and judicial activities.

Having emerged as an independent branch of knowledge at the end of the 19th century. Legal psychology is currently becoming an integral part of legal education, integrating all branches of law on their unified basis - on the basis of the “human factor”.

Control testing

1. Subject of legal psychology:

A - patterns of occurrence, features of the course of mental processes in humans;

B - patterns and mechanisms of the psyche of people included in the sphere of relations regulated by law;

B - borderline mental personality disorder;

2. The tasks of legal psychology include:

A - synthesis of psychological and legal knowledge; ensuring moral and psychological training of lawyers; disclosure of mental characteristics of various subjects of legal relations;

B - disclosure of the peculiarities of the course of neurophysiological processes in the brain; establishing psychological contacts with sick people;

B - synthesis of psychological and legal knowledge; scientific organization of teachers' work; moral and political tempering of personality.

3. A section of legal psychology that studies the problems of mental reflection of legally significant phenomena, the psychological aspects of lawmaking, legal consciousness - this is:

A - criminal psychology;

B - developmental psychology;

B - legal psychology.

4. The section of legal psychology that studies the psychological aspects of property, economic and personal relations regulated by civil law is:

A - forensic psychology;

B - psychology of civil law regulation;

B - criminal psychology.

5. Section studying the psychology of desocialization of the individual, psychological mechanisms of delinquent and criminal behavior. psychology of the personality of the criminal and criminal groups is:

And forensic psychology;

B - criminal psychology;

B - psychology of correctional activities;

6. Correctional psychology solves problems:

A - establishing sanity - insanity; establishing the form of guilt; studying the social environment;

B - resocialization and readaptation of convicts after serving their sentences; problems of execution of criminal punishment;

B - problems of execution of criminal punishment; problems of aesthetic education.

7. The methodological basis for research in legal psychology is:

A - systematic approach, determinism, scientific validity;

B - questioning, testing, systematic approach;

B - determinism, experiment, participant observation.

8. The most ancient in origin is the section of legal psychology that studies:

A - psychology of criminal intent;

B - legal worldview;

B - psychology of judicial activity.

In - Piaget.

B - Lombroso;

11. Russian judicial speakers, who for the first time integrated knowledge of law, psychology and sociology in their activities:

B) - Petrazhitsky.

13. The biological basis for the formation of personality is:

A - character, temperament, type of nervous activity;

B - temperament, extraversion, neuroticism;

B - knowledge, skills, abilities.

14. A psychological state associated with the accumulation of negative emotions as a result of the inability to satisfy desires “conflict of desires” is:

A - Frustration;

B - affect.

15. A person as a bearer of a set of mental properties and qualities that determine socially significant forms of his activity and behavior is:

A - individual;

16. Individual psychological characteristics of a person, which reflect the strength, mobility and balance of nervous processes.

Subject and tasks of legal psychology

Legal psychology is an applied science located at the intersection of psychology and jurisprudence. Studies the manifestation and use of mental patterns and psychological knowledge in the field of legal regulation and legal activity.

Legal psychology studies the problems of increasing the efficiency of lawmaking, law enforcement, law enforcement and penitentiary activities based on taking into account psychological factors.

The subject of legal psychology is the study of mental phenomena, mechanisms and patterns manifested in the sphere of law.

Tasks of legal psychology:

1) carry out a scientific synthesis of psychological and legal knowledge;

2) reveal the psychological and legal essence of basic legal categories;

3) ensure that lawyers have a deep understanding of the object of their activity – human behavior;

4) reveal the features of the mental activity of various subjects of legal relations, their mental states in various situations of law enforcement and law enforcement;

The interaction between psychology and jurisprudence is considered mainly at 3 levels:

1) the application of psychological laws in jurisprudence in a “pure” form (a psychologist acts as an expert, specialist in civil or criminal proceedings, etc.);

2) the use of psychology in jurisprudence through the introduction of psychological knowledge into law enforcement, law enforcement practice, in the selection of personnel in the law enforcement system and their psychological support, etc.;

3) the emergence of legal psychology as a science based on psychology and jurisprudence.

Legal psychology is based on general and social psychology, from which its methodology stems. A personal approach is carried out (for example, personality is studied in the dynamics of an offense), the process of activity is studied in connection with the structure of the personality and the system of legal norms, the system of mental processes, temperament, personality and social group, socialization and social justice, legal awareness, etc. are studied.

Methods of legal psychology

These methods can be classified according to the goals and methods of research (Vasiliev V. A., 2002, pp. 40-51).

Depending on the objectives of the study, the following methods are distinguished:

scientific research (the psychological patterns of an individual’s relationships, regulated by legal norms, are studied, and scientifically based recommendations for practice are developed);

psychological impact on the individual (aimed at preventing criminal activity, solving crimes and identifying their causes, studying the effectiveness of punishment and the possibility of re-education, etc.; these methods are used only within the framework of the Criminal Procedure Code and ethical standards);

forensic psychological examination (the most complete and objective study conducted by expert psychologists according to the order of judicial, investigative or inquiry bodies).

According to the methods of legal psychology, methods are divided into:

method of psychological analysis of criminal case materials;

anamnestic (biographical) method;

methods of observation and natural experiment;

instrumental methods for studying individual psychological characteristics of a person (various variants of the experimental method, various test methods, questionnaires, questionnaires).

There is another classification of methods of legal psychology (Enikeev M.I., 2000), which includes:

Personal communication qualities

Psychology of communication in the professional activity of a lawyer. Basic techniques for establishing psychological contact with citizens.

Communication is a subtle, multifaceted process of establishing and developing interpersonal contacts. For lawyers, communication is a special type of professional activity that takes place in a special procedural regime in compliance with strictly defined forms of communication (reception of documents, complaints, petitions, questioning during a preliminary hearing). These rules are established by the Code of Criminal Procedure, Code of Civil Procedure, Code of Administrative Offenses and other legislative acts. If these rules are violated, the evidence obtained, for example, is considered inadmissible, and legal sanctions are applied to lawyers who violate these rules.

However, not all cases of communication are described by law, so a lawyer must have communication skills, knowledge of etiquette, and knowledge of the rules of speech behavior of social groups.

In sociology, there are three indispensable components of a lawyer’s non-procedural communication:

1) communication side. Allows a lawyer to participate in interpersonal relationships with maximum benefit and conduct a fruitful dialogue. When entering into psychological contact, it is necessary to take into account the social role of the law enforcement lawyer and the object with whom they enter into dialogue, since it forms a system of role expectations, manifested in the style of performance. All role features influence the development of communication processes. If a lawyer violates the rules of role communication, then this gives rise to misunderstanding, since this behavior is unexpected and incomprehensible to the interlocutor.

Verbal communication involves the use of speech with its rich phonetics, vocabulary, and syntax.

Also, when communicating, they use written language - when drawing up protocols. The requirements for the protocol are: use of unambiguous terms, use of precise, concise formulations, brevity.

Thus, the lawyer has to resort to different types of communication, but the information received will receive legal force if it is received in a certain procedural manner.

2) The perceptual side of communication. In the process of communication between its participants, an active mutual perception of the parties occurs, in which an idea of ​​the interlocutor and of oneself is formed. By comparing yourself with your interlocutor, you can imagine the logic of his actions. Or you understand the emotionality of his actions - empathy. There is also the concept of reflection - the process of an individual’s awareness of how he is perceived by his communication partner. If a subject misinforms a lawyer, then a misconception will be formed about him due to the attribution of certain character traits. A lawyer must notice the impact of the above phenomena, as well as others (social status evaluative stereotypes, the effect of novelty...) and in order to protect himself from communication barriers.

The interactive side of communication is the exchange of actions at the verbal and non-verbal level. Based on the communication position taken by the interlocutor, the lawyer must be able to anticipate his reaction and prevent a possible conflict or get out of it.

System of legal psychology

Legal psychology is usually divided into two parts: general and special.

The general part includes the subject, system, history of the development of legal psychology, methods, its relationship with other scientific disciplines, psychology of legal work.

The special part includes forensic psychological examination, psychology of the victim, psychology of a minor, criminal psychology, investigative psychology, psychology of judicial consideration of criminal and civil cases, correctional labor psychology, adaptation of the released person’s personality to the conditions of normal life.

There is a slightly different form of presenting the system of legal psychology, consisting of 5 sections with corresponding substructures.

Legal psychology – psychological aspects of effective lawmaking, legal socialization of the individual, psychology of legal understanding and legal consciousness.

Criminal psychology – the role of biological and social factors in the criminalization of the individual, the concept of the personality of the criminal, the criminal act committed;

Psychology of criminal proceedings or forensic psychology (for criminal cases)

Psychology of preliminary investigation

psychology of the personality of the investigator, his activities in the investigation, the formation of information, as well as forensic psychological examination in criminal proceedings.

Psychology of judicial activity

psychology of preparation and planning of trial, features of its conduct, decision-making by the judge

Penitentiary (correctional) psychology– psychology of the convicted person and the criminal, ways of correction, prevention.

Psychology of civil legal regulation

psychology of civil legal relations, positions of the parties to civil proceedings and their communication activity, aspects of preparing civil cases;

psychology of the activities of a lawyer, notary, arbitration, prosecutor's office in civil proceedings.

Legal consciousness

Law-abiding behavior is the result of socialization, during which the subject assimilates moral and legal prohibitions, social stereotypes of behavior, which, in turn, is determined by group and individual legal consciousness, a sense of social responsibility, social justice, legal intuition, etc.

The psychology of law-abiding behavior examines the internal structure and individual components of the individual and group, which, in combination with environmental factors, provide various response options that do not go beyond the current legislation.

When forming a personality under normal conditions of socialization, legal prohibitions are taken into account and become habitual frameworks of behavior; a social stereotype of individual behavior gradually develops. This stereotype is based on individual legal consciousness based on public consciousness. A person develops a mechanism of social self-regulation, that is, a habitual readiness to act in a given environment in a certain way.

Legal consciousness in the broad sense of the word refers to the entire legal experience of behavior of an individual, group, society. First of all, it includes the psychological mechanism of law-abiding behavior and the relationship between various defects of individual legal consciousness and illegal behavior.

Legal awareness is one of the forms of social consciousness; its content and development are determined by the material conditions of society. It reflects social relations that are regulated or should be regulated by the rules of law.

The economic and other needs of society, having passed through consciousness, take the form of legal motives and are ultimately expressed in the rules of law. Thus, the relationship between interests and needs, on the one hand, and law, on the other, is mediated by legal consciousness (legal psychology and legal ideology).

Legal awareness as one of the forms of social consciousness has the following characteristics:

– not only reflects social reality, but also actively influences it, is the highest level of reflection of the socio-economic relations of people, expressed in the laws of their society;

– always manifests itself through the second signaling system; the verbal and mental activity of people acts as a mechanism of legal consciousness, reflecting the system of legal knowledge and concepts that regulate social relations;

– cannot exist without its specific carrier - a specific human personality, groups; teams. Based on the commonality of awareness of legal norms in society, people unite into groups, and the category of group legal consciousness arises, characteristic of social communities and historical eras.

Legal conflicts of the individual with society - offenses and crimes - should be considered in criminal and penitentiary psychology, taking into account what stages of development of legal consciousness are violated in a particular case and what measures of social readaptation of offenders can return them to the norms of legal consciousness implemented in normal legal behavior.

Labor psychology of a lawyer

Methods for studying the work of lawyers

Professionogram of the legal profession

Among the legal professions, there are those whose mastery requires not only inclinations, vocation and education, but also extensive life experience, a whole range of professional skills and abilities. These are, first of all, the professions of a judge, a prosecutor, as well as an Investigator, an arbitrator and some others. The complex and responsible work of these people places increased demands on the employee’s personality. Most of these professions are currently considered prestigious, as evidenced by competitions for entry into law schools and other special educational institutions that train personnel for law enforcement agencies. However, many young people choose these professions for themselves without a clear idea of ​​the complexity of the upcoming activity, and, most importantly, they have no idea what requirements will be placed on them.

The word "legal" is synonymous with the word "legal". Almost all legal terminology is based on these words.

In general, legal activity is a work that requires great effort, patience, conscientiousness, knowledge and high responsibility, based on the strictest adherence to the law.

The work of lawyers, very diverse and complex, has a number of features that distinguish it from the work of most people in other professions.

Firstly, the legal professions are characterized by an extraordinary variety of problems to be solved. The program for solving these problems can be expressed in the most general form, which, as a rule, is formulated in a legal norm. Each new case for an investigator, prosecutor, judge, lawyer represents a new task. The fewer templates used in approaching a matter, the higher the likelihood of finding the truth.

Secondly, legal activity, with all its complexity and diversity, is completely subject to legal regulation, and this leaves an imprint on the personality of each lawyer. Already when planning their activities, any employee mentally compares future actions with the legal norms that regulate these actions.

For almost all legal professions, one of the main aspects of their activity is communicative activity, which consists of communication in the conditions of legal regulation. This legal (procedural) regulation leaves a specific imprint on all participants in communication, endowing them with special rights and responsibilities and giving a special flavor to communication, distinguishing the legal professions as a special group.

Most legal professions are characterized by high emotional intensity of work. Moreover, more often this is associated with negative emotions, with the need to suppress them, and postpone emotional release for a relatively long period of time.

The work of many lawyers (prosecutor, investigator, judge, operative officer, etc.) is associated with the exercise of special powers, with the right and obligation to exercise power in the name of the law. Therefore, most people occupying these positions develop a professional sense of increased responsibility for the consequences of their actions.

For most legal professions, a characteristic feature is the organizational side of the activity, which, as a rule, has two aspects:

Organization of own work during the working day, week, organization of work on the case in conditions of irregular working hours;

Organization of joint work with other officials, law enforcement agencies, and other parties in criminal proceedings.

Many legal professions are characterized by overcoming resistance to their activities from individuals, and in some cases, microgroups. A prosecutor, investigator, operative, or judge, in search of the truth in a case, often encounters passive or active resistance from persons interested in a certain outcome of the case.

Essentially, all legal professions are characterized by a creative aspect of work, which follows from the listed characteristics.

The creation of professiograms of legal professions is part of the deontological characteristics of a lawyer’s work.

Modern legal deontology is closely connected with the progress of legal science as a whole, the popularization of its achievements through the press, radio, television, and the growth of the cultural and educational level of the country's population. All this inevitably introduces new concepts into general legal deontology, which, along with general provisions concerning the professional ethics of a lawyer, faces challenges related to the specifics of a particular legal case. That is why each legal profession, in addition to general requirements, imposes specific requirements on the practicing lawyer - investigator, prosecutor, judge, notary, arbitrator and others. Improving the quality of a lawyer’s work is impossible without taking into account the individual characteristics of his personality and the correspondence of personal qualities to the objective requirements of this profession.

The development of professiograms (derived from the word professiography, which means a description of a profession) represents a detailed description of the most common and leading legal professions, indicating their characteristic functions. An integral part of professiograms is a psychogram. The purpose of developing professiograms is to focus on the study of relatively stable, stable properties that characterize a specialist lawyer in his practical activities.

A great contribution to the development of professiograms of legal professions was made by Russian scientists V.L. Vasiliev, M.I. Enikeev, Yu.V. Chufarovsky. In the activities of a specialist lawyer, they distinguish the following aspects: search (cognitive), communicative, certification, organizational, reconstructive (constructive) and social.

Let us give a general description of each of these aspects (types) of activity:

social – emphasizes the social significance of the legal profession as an organizer of the fight against crime, a defender of the rights and legitimate interests of citizens;

search – consists of collecting information necessary to resolve a legal matter;

reconstructive - represents the final analysis of the collected information on a legal case, putting forward working hypotheses, developing an action plan for its further consideration and completion;

communicative – means the ability to communicate with colleagues, clients, participants in the case and all those related to it;

organizational – consists of volitional actions to check working versions and their implementation;

certifying – consists of the ability to put the received information on a legal matter into the legally prescribed forms of written acts and documents (decisions, protocols, sentences, etc.).

In each of the specialties, these aspects of a lawyer’s professional activity are manifested in a different set, with unequal intensity. For each lawyer, depending on his personal qualities, they acquire a specific character.

Consideration of professiograms in the proposed sequence does not mean that the first legal profession is of greater importance, and each subsequent one is of lesser importance. All legal professions are called upon to guard the social values ​​of the individual, society and the state, and therefore each of them has a specific and important significance for the affirmation of these values.

Investigator's professional profile

The investigator's professional profile is a complex hierarchical structure in which all aspects of professional activity, as well as personal qualities, skills and abilities are presented in mutual connection or dependence.

Each side of the professiogram reflects, firstly, a certain cycle of professional activity, and secondly, it implements personal qualities, skills, abilities, as well as knowledge that ensure professional success at this level of activity.

The basis of the professiogram is the search side of the activity, which realizes the desire to solve a crime and consists of collecting initial information to solve professional problems.

The search side of the investigator’s activity is of particular importance at the first stage of the investigation. Its essence lies in isolating forensically significant information from the environment (traces of the criminal, the victim, weapons or instruments of crime, etc.), which makes it possible to reliably reconstruct the crime event with the degree of accuracy required by the law.

Inspecting the scene of the incident, the investigator is looking for answers to the questions: what happened here, what traces did this event leave? In the correct solution of these problems, the role of personal factors is great: firstly, these are the inclinations and abilities of a tracker, then forensic knowledge (the doctrine of traces, methods of committing crimes), professional experience (skills of isolating reference points and constructing the outline of an event), life experience are important . The effectiveness of the evidence collection process largely depends on the investigator’s knowledge of the information properties of various material objects and on his individual information stock.

The next level is the communicative side of the activity, during which the investigator must obtain the information necessary to solve the crime from people by communicating with them.

The investigator must be able to organize his mental state. A good investigator has the skills to manage his volitional and emotional spheres and, within the framework of the law, the emotions of the person being interrogated.

All information obtained as a result of the search and communication activities of the investigator or interrogator is transformed in the process of certification activities into special forms provided for by law: protocols, resolutions, etc. To do this, the investigator must be fluent in written language and have the skills to quickly translate oral speech into written language .

At the next level, the investigator acts as the organizer of the investigation. Making responsible decisions, he achieves their implementation and at the same time acts as an organizer of the activities of many people.

At the next level is the reconstructive side of the investigator’s activity. In the language of cybernetics, this is a block of information processing and decision making. The general and special intelligence of the investigator is important at this level. A modern investigator must know a lot: criminal law, criminal procedure, criminology and pedagogy, accounting and forensic ballistics. This is not a complete list of scientific disciplines on which the special intelligence of the investigator relies when processing initial information, putting forward hypotheses, versions and developing investigation plans.

The structure of the professiogram is completed by the social side, in which the investigator appears as the organizer of the fight against crime in his area or area. The center of gravity in the fight against crime shifts to finding out its causes and conditions and taking measures to eliminate them.

The investigator’s perception is always purposeful, systematic, and meaningful. This is due to professional experience and peculiarities of thinking.

Observation as a certain type of human activity is associated with the deliberate perception of objects and phenomena of the external world.

A special place in the observation process is occupied by an orientation towards a certain activity, which depends on a specific need and the objective possibility of satisfaction.

The concept of installation is closely related to the problem of unity and integrity of activity.

The system created by the investigator is determined by his “isolation” of the crime event. This is a more or less figurative dynamic picture of events, which represents a form of existence of versions.

Forensic observation when examining a crime scene is a systematic, purposeful, thoughtful perception of the situation. This perception in psychology is called observation. For it to be as effective as possible, certain rules must be followed. Before the inspection begins, it is important to get a general idea of ​​what happened. Although the initial information is often very contradictory and may not be confirmed later, this nevertheless allows the investigator to outline an inspection plan and begin to build a mental model of what happened.

Analysis of successful inspections indicates that at the initial stage, the investigators who carried out these inspections had a predominant simultaneous (whole) perception of objects and phenomena. Successive tendencies (consistent description of “all” objects that come into view, clockwise or counterclockwise, without attempting to isolate traces of a crime event) deprived the investigator of a creative approach and did not create the prerequisites for identifying the most important carriers of forensically significant information.