In order to identify how citizens avaluate interethnic relations, activities of state bodies and public institutions to preserve interethnic tolerance and social harmony, in June 2014 a sociological survey was conducted. The article presents the results of this study of interethnic integration and consolidation of Pavlodar population.

In this study, ways of protecting civil rights and their classification were examined. The author also studied the main problems of legislative consolidation of ways to protect civil rights.

In recent years, the Republic of Kazakhstan has maintained an ambiguous criminal situation, and there is an increase in certain types of crimes, against the background of the overall positive dynamics of decline. Special attention of criminologists has recently been attracted to the study of crimes in the family and household sphere, and crimes committed in the sphere of religious and spiritual relations, since both of these types are showing increasing prevalence. Therefore, considering such an important institution as a «voluntary refusal», it would be advisable to consider them from the perspective of the offenses we have named, especially since countering them is one of the main directions of state criminal policy. In general, the study of the institution of voluntary refusal to commit an offense is based not only on coercive measures, but also on incentive measures, which means the opportunity to correct the behavior of the offender until the end of the illegal act. The purpose of this scientific article is to study the features of voluntary refusal to commit a criminal offense in crimes committed in the sphere of religious, spiritual and family-household relations, taking into account practice and making recommendations for improving regulations of a criminal nature. The leading methodological tools of the scientific article are dialectical, phenomenological, synergetic and systematic approaches of scientific cognition. Before proceeding to the analysis of the concept of voluntary refusal, it should be noted that the norms about it are far from perfect. There is no unambiguous understanding of the signs of voluntary refusal among scientists, which complicates law enforcement practice. One of the most important tasks of any scientific research is the development of scientific concepts. The consolidation of such concepts in legislation is an effective way to establish a uniform understanding of the norms, a clear idea of their content and, as a result, an increase in the effectiveness of the impact of criminal law in the process of legal regulation. However, these concepts themselves do not reflect reality like contemplation or representation, they are closer to the essence of the phenomenon. The article concludes that the essential features of the concept itself somewhat narrow the objective reality. But, at the same time, the correct identification of the main features in the concept is an important task of scientific research.