The concept of lie in criminalistics

The aim of the study is to analyze various approaches to the term “deception” used in forensic science and other branches of knowledge, and to develop such concept which content will be best suited to criminalistics tasks. The article analyzes views on the concept of lies, conventionally divided to the "logical" and "psychological" approaches. And positions of various authors are analyzed through forensic point of view. On the one hand, this implies the need to separate true and false information. On the other hand, it is necessary to distinguish statements which are aimed to misinform the investigator from statements which do not have such a goal. It is proved that the use of a “logical” view to the term “lies” as the opposite of truth in criminalistics is not optimal, because it causes the need to introduce a redundant terminology. This problem is overcome by the “psychological” approach, which considers the lie not as a type of information, but as a type of communicative acts. The views of psychologists and criminologists on the system of concepts characterizing statements in the communication process are analyzed. The study showed that the classification of V.V. Znakov, although it is deeply reasonable, cannot be transferred to criminalistics. The forensic science is implying a separate examination of each act of reflecting information about the investigated event. And the system of concepts proposed by A.R. Ratinov allows to consider this fact. The article suggests a certain refinement of this system of concepts. As a result, the definition of lies as the transfer of information that is perceived by the subject as untrue (for example, incomplete or distorted), in order to mislead another person.

lies, deceit, truth, mistake, deception detection