METHODS OF CRIMINOLOGICAL RESEARCH

The article deals with the methods used in the study of the phenomena that make up the subject of criminology. The main task is to analyze the content of the methodology, general scientific methods, private methods and techniques used in criminological studies. In the course of their work, the authors used metaphysics and dialectic as a methodology; showed the specifics of their application to crime, as well as legal background for the nature of crimi- nality e.g. its public danger. The authors used such general scientific methods as general scientific approaches and mid-level theories. In the case of criminality, the use of a systematic approach and philosophical teaching about human activity is shown. This enabled them to present criminality as a system the structural trait of which is a crime, and a holistic quality is a public danger which synthesizes the public danger of crimes, perpetrators and criminal groups. As a theory of the middle level, the theory of psychological alienation of the person is applied, according to which the typological feature of the criminal's personality is its anxiety for its social or biological status since the crime is psychological protection for external circumstances that cause such anxiety. Among private methods, the emphasis is on the statistical method used to characterize quantitative-quality crime indicators and a sociological one (interviewing, conversation, interviews, expert evaluation, analysis of documents, observation). The methods above have limited possibilities: criminal statistics operate with data only on the recorded crimes, reflected in the documents of primary records, the closed criminal environment does not allow to use the method of included surveillance; the method of interviewing the participants of criminal groups and their relatives often gives false information, or cannot be applied because the persons in question refuse to be involved in questioning at all; the experiment deals only with certain aspects of criminal justice. The authors conclude that the combination of methodology, general scientific and specific research methods, the specificity of their application to group crime form the methodology of its study. They point out the application in criminology of sociometric and stratometric methods, by which the mechanism of formation, the dynamics of the development of criminal groups is shown, their classification is given, the number of group members is revealed, their status in the group and the structure of the group is established.