Problems of Differentiating Administrative Offenses and Criminal Misdemeanors in Police Law Enforcement Practice

A deep systemic crisis is observed in the legal system of the Republic of Kazakhstan, caused
by the blurring of the material and legal boundary between administrative offenses and criminal
misdemeanors. This imbalance generates procedural paralysis of investigative bodies, deforms
criminal statistics, and violates basic principles of justice when administrative sanctions de facto
multiply exceed criminal ones.
A comprehensive scientific and practical analysis of the problems of differentiating
administrative and criminal delicts in police activities, identifying the determinants of the procedural
collapse, and developing fundamental recommendations for optimizing the architecture of public
liability.
The research utilizes dialectical, formal-legal, comparative-legal, and statistical tools.
Mathematical modeling of the "punitive equivalent" of sanctions was conducted, and the relevant
empirical data of the law enforcement agencies of the Pavlodar region for 2024 were analyzed.
A deep theoretical and legal dissonance in the interpretation of the category of "public danger"
has been established. It is proven that 27 % of administrative offenses are equal to or exceed criminal
misdemeanors in terms of the severity of punishment. High latency of crime and artificial
transformation of police statistics due to the redundancy of the criminal procedural form of
investigating minor acts have been identified. The critical need for a doctrinal revision of legislation is substantiated: strict synchronization
of sanctions of the Administrative Offenses Code and the Criminal Code of the Republic of
Kazakhstan with the introduction of genuinely simplified proceedings, or the complete abolition of the
category of "criminal misdemeanor" with a return to the binary system and the implementation of the
institution of administrative prejudice following the example of adjacent legal systems.