Eduard A. Makarimov

Among the variety of forms of criminal activity with the use of firearms and (or) explosive devices in recent years, cases of armed attacks on educational institutions, which take the form of mass murders, have taken a special place. Given the comparative novelty of this phenomenon of russian reality, there is an urgent need to develop adequate tactical and methodological approaches to their investigation and prevention. This article is the first attempt in the Russian criminalistics science to make a systematic analysis of the structural elements of the criminalistic characteristics of mass murders in educational organisations. Typical information about the crime scene conditions, the method of committing the offence, the trace picture, as well as the characteristics of the personality of the offender are considered. The article substantiates the position that it is inexpedient to single out as a separate element of criminalistic characteristic the information about the personality of victims — their choice is non-personalised, the determining factor is physical reach. These offences are often replicas of previously known acts of violence. This directly reflects on their criminalistic uniqueness and emphasises their supranational character, as well as indicating the potential specificity of their manifestation in the Russian context.