IMPROVING THE PROCEDURAL MECHANISM FOR ENSURING THE VICTIM'S RIGHT TO COMPENSATION FOR PROPERTY DAMAGE IN CRIMINAL PROCEEDINGS

Abstract

The article examines the theoretical and practical issues of improving the procedural mechanism for ensuring the victim’s right to compensation for property damage caused by a criminal offense in the criminal proceedings of the Republic of Uzbekistan. It substantiates that ensuring the restoration of the victim’s property rights constitutes one of the fundamental objectives of modern criminal justice, alongside establishing the circumstances of the offense, bringing the offender to criminal liability, and imposing a fair punishment.

Based on an analysis of the criminal procedure legislation of the Republic of Uzbekistan, scholarly approaches, and law enforcement practice, the study explores the content and correlation of the concepts of property damage, recovery, restitution, and state compensation. It also examines the procedural status of the victim, the civil claimant, and the civil defendant, while highlighting the significance of the civil claim as the principal procedural instrument for protecting the victim’s property interests within criminal proceedings.

The article analyzes in detail the procedural mechanism for securing a victim’s property claims throughout all stages of the criminal process: from establishing the fact of property damage and filing a civil action to the enforcement of the court’s judgment. It identifies shortcomings in law enforcement practice, including difficulties in the timely identification of a suspect’s or accused's assets, the insufficient effectiveness of measures to secure property claims, problems arising during the enforcement of court judgments, and the lack of a comprehensive procedural mechanism that guarantees the actual recovery of property damage resulting from a crime.

The proposals formulated in the article are aimed at enhancing the effectiveness of the criminal procedural mechanism for ensuring the victim’s right to compensation for property damage, strengthening procedural guarantees of judicial protection, improving law enforcement practice, and further developing the criminal procedure legislation of the Republic of Uzbekistan.