Journal of Security and Sustainability Issues

The primary concern of this article is to review the knowledge and ability of people to act to protect themselves and others in the face of various risks and hazards, and to manage accident and crisis situations. Relevant issues include the needs and requirements of emergency situations, people’s ability to respond to them, and factors that affect coping ability. The selected sub-areas are practiceoriented and defined in terms of real-world problems rather than theories or scientific concepts. One of the purposes of choosing to structure the review of risk, accident and crisis management psychology in this way is to emphasize the importance of human limitations and capabilities as an element in all areas of activity and responsibility. This approach, in turn, assumes that the review contains a broad theoretical base and multifaceted approaches, which are necessarily treated here rather generically.

The aim of the article is to present Chechen terrorism as a consequence of violations of basic human rights, including the crimes of genocide committed by the Russian Federation in the First Russo-Chechen War in 1994-1996. It has been argued that terrorism has become a dramatic way of drawing the international community’s attention to the tragedy taking place in Chechnya. Over time, Chechen fighters were influenced by radical Muslim groups and used terrorist fighting methods. On the other hand, the Russians did not shy away from bombing entire villages they suspected of sheltering wanted fighters. All this led to an escalation of terrorism and radicalization of religious views among a large part of the society. Moreover, the lack of a decisive reaction from the West to the policy of exterminating the Chechen population by the Russian Federation has led to an increase in anti-Western sentiment, which had not been recorded in Chechnya before.

This paper focuses on terrorist attacks carried out by so-called ‘lone wolves’ or ‘lone actors’. It provides an analytical evaluation of the basic characteristics of these attackers and discusses possible access to their identification in society. To create the profile of a ‘typical’ lone wolf, we collected information from a database of lone wolves who committed their terrorist attacks in the United States, Canada, the European Union, Switzerland, Norway and Australia from 1998 to 2016. Based on these data, it was demonstrated that lone wolves are not homogenous group, therefore, there is no one ‘typical’ lone wolf. Instead, three main groups of lone wolves were identified: 1) lone wolves with a criminal past, 2) lone wolves with a mental illness and 3) young lone wolves coming from minority groups in the country. These characteristics could be used as an auxiliary tool by state security forces during identification of potential lone wolf terrorists.

The basis of this paper is the study of legislative acts of such counties as Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Poland, Ukrainie and Russia, related to national security, public order and interests of state prosperity in order to prevent disorders or crimes, to protect health and morality, to safeguard rights and freedoms. The objective of the paper is to assess whether the national legislation meets in this field contemporary requirements, and what are differences in comparison with the legislation of other countries. Our results show that the laws of above mentioned countries are supplemented in due time as much as possible taking into account needs and financial resources of corresponding state. The laws have also similar objectives and tasks. There are some distinctions in application of legal provisions, which, after discussion, would be usefully to introduce into normative regulations of the Republic of Latvia. The norms of law must be clearly defined; the commensurate restrictions must be appropriate for achievement of particular objective, as well as socially necessary. Moreover, the authors of the paper offer concrete proposals taking into account human rights, contemporary situation on the international scene, as well as potential of respective state institution.

Consequently, as a result of implemented criminal policy liberalization in the last few years the number of convicts in Latvia has fallen sharply. Despite the fact that the range of the criminal punishment applied for adults and minors does not have a significant difference, the sharp decline in proportion of imprisonment can be explained by compulsory education measures and by forced labor, which are broadly used as criminal punishment in legal procedure of convicted minors. After conducting the analysis of criminal offences committed by minors, it can be concluded that the large amount of these criminal offences are property-related criminal offences, i.e. theft and robbery. However, the amount of violent criminal offences committed by minors, which are directed against human life and health, i.e. infliction of great bodily injuries, smurders, etc., increases with every year. The analysis of the components of crime of the criminal offenses committed by minors shows that the criminal offenses committed by minors are becoming more aggressive, more brutal and better planed, which are often directly or indirectly related to alcohol, psychotropic or narcotic substance abuse or domestic violence. This article identifies and analyses the results of the conducted study on peculiarities of execution of the sentence of imprisonment in respect of convicted minors in Latvia. This study examines the peculiarities of execution of the sentence of imprisonment in respect of convicted minors, identifies specific issues and suggests possible solutions. International standards provide that minor prisoners while being in a closed prison environment are defenseless and are at particular risk; therefore, the study obtains the status of vitally important topicality. Based on the study there has been developed a series of recommendations for the staff (of places of confinement) working with minor prisoners, as well as pointed out the necessity to make amendments to the norms of The Sentence Execution Code of Latvia.