The article examines the problem of determining the essence of the concept of "crime detection" in Russian law. For this purpose, the method of literature review was used and during the study the authors analyzed the normative legal acts of the Russian Federation, such as: the constitution of the Russian Federation, the Criminal Code of the Federation, the Code of Criminal Procedure and the Federal Law "on Operational Search Activity", the Federal Law "on police forces”, interdepartmental and departmental normative legal acts of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia, among others, to determine the precise moment of detection of the crime phenomenon. Moreover, the article proposes to clarify the definition of the term “crime detection”. It is concluded that it is advisable to distinguish the concepts of "crime detection" and other related concepts in practice and theory to avoid confusion.

About two million crimes are registered annually in the Russian Federation, and about half of them remain unsolved. At the end of the calendar year, unsolved crimes are transferred to the category of «unsolved crimes of the past years». In accordance with the Russian criminal procedure legislation, after the expiration of the procedural terms the employee who conducted the investigation is obliged to suspend the procedural activity, i.e. to stop investigating. At the same time, police officers authorized to carry out investigations have the right and, moreover, are obliged to take measures to solve the crimes. The presented article is dedicated to the problem of solving the cold cases by the investigative police units. The authors of thearticle analyzed the existing practice of the investigative police units in resolving cold cases and procedural activities to investigate crimes of this category, as well as the state of legal regulation by departmental acts of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia and the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation on that matter. Based on the analysis, the authors make proposals to improve the process of analyzing the materials of unsolved criminal cases, consider the issues of planning and information and analytical support for investigative activities to solve crimes of the past years.