Dear colleagues! The All-Ukrainian Association of Polygraph Examiners sincerely congratulates you all on your professional holiday! We wish you professional success, job satisfaction, insightful questions, informative polygraph reports, grateful clients, and respondents who are impressed by your professionalism!

On April 19, we celebrate International Polygraph Examiner Day: it was on April 19, 1921, that John Larson conducted a polygraph examination to solve a crime and identified the perpetrator, who confessed to the theft.

What event is associated with July 28, the date of celebration of Ukrainian Polygraph Examiner Day?

In any great undertaking, there is always a starting point, a first step, which, as a result of many years of collective effort, eventually turns into a victorious march. For Ukrainian polygraphology, the starting point was the first approved Instruction on the use of computer polygraphs in working with internal affairs personnel, which was approved by Order of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine No. 842 of July 28, 2004.

Screenshot of the first page of the first approved Instruction for Ukrainian polygraph examiners

Now, 21 years later, the use of polygraphs is directly provided for in six Ukrainian laws: Article 50 of the Law of Ukraine “On the National Police,” Article 26 of the Law of Ukraine “On the State Bureau of Investigations,” Article 31 of the Law of Ukraine “On Intelligence,” Art. 24 of the Law of Ukraine “On the Economic Security Bureau,” Art. 16 of the Law of Ukraine “On State Protection of State Authorities and Officials of Ukraine,” Art. 572 of the Customs Code of Ukraine. Currently, there are at least ten instructions and procedures for the use of polygraphs in various state bodies that are publicly available. But back in 2004, the very fact of adopting the first polygraph instruction seemed unrealistic to many. Unrealistic for mid-level officials, for lawyers who responded to all our initiatives with the mantra “There are no legal grounds!”, but not for polygraph examiners! We clearly understood that until there was a legally binding Instruction, there would be no development, no progress, and no moving forward. Therefore, we “chipped this rock” (Ivan Franko) and finally achieved our goal.

The textbook “Polygraphology” (T.R. Morozova, 2019, 476 p.) describes the history of this event in more detail. Now we will note the main milestones that preceded the adoption of the Instruction.

1997 – The Ukrainian diaspora in the United States donates 10 AXCITON polygraphs to the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine.

1998 – A group of employees from the Main Directorate for Combating Organized Crime of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine is sent to attend polygraph courses at the Main Directorate of Internal Affairs of the Krasnodar Territory. They are joined by employees of the private security company Alfa-Shchit: Zhanetta Polovnikova, Sergey Delikatny, and Pavel Prygunov. After returning from training, they actively conducted polygraph examinations to detect and investigate crimes in the internal affairs agencies.

1999 – A group of English-speaking officers from the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine was sent to study at the Academy of Judicial Psychophysiology (Largo, Florida, USA). Among them were Vadym Barco Sr. and Oleksandr Alekseev from the National Academy of Internal Affairs of Ukraine, Oleksandr Betsa from the Kyiv Institute of Internal Affairs, and Ihor Tsivinsky from the Lviv Institute of Internal Affairs.

1999 – The first conference on legal psychology is held at the Kyiv Institute of Internal Affairs, with a separate section devoted to polygraphology. Representatives of the Security Service of Ukraine and the Ministry of Internal Affairs deliver reports. Valery Varlamov is among the invited speakers.

2001 – Order No. 743 of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine dated August 28, 2001, “On conducting an experiment on the use of computer polygraphs in the activities of internal affairs agencies” is issued. Based on the results of the experiment, polygraph studies are recognized as an effective method that is appropriate to use in the activities of internal affairs agencies.

2003 – With the support of Alexander Dubovoy, candidate of legal sciences, associate professor, retired police colonel, and director of the Santodor Scientific Research Bureau of Forensic Expertise, two employees of the Laboratory of Psychological Support for Law Enforcement Activities of the Research Institute for Crime Prevention of the National Academy of Internal Affairs of Ukraine, candidates of psychological sciences Iryna Dubova and Tetiana Morozova, go to Krasnodar for training.

2004 – Employees of the Laboratory for Psychological Support of Law Enforcement Activities of the Research Institute for Combating Crime of the National Academy of Internal Affairs of Ukraine, together with employees of the Center for Practical Psychology of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine, submit for approval the Instructions on the use of computer polygraphs in working with law enforcement personnel.

The word “computer” appeared in the title of the Instruction at the last stage, after an attempt was made to push the single-channel Vector polygraph device into law enforcement agencies. Polygraph examiners understood well that introducing single-channel devices into Ukrainian law enforcement agencies was inappropriate due to the high risk of discrediting the field. However, they did not want to listen to us. By including the word “computerized,” we got rid of the threat of working in the 21st century with, in essence, single-channel galvanometers, because the Vector was not only not ‘poly’ (many) and “graph” (that which writes), it simply could not be connected to a computer. The idea worked, but when it became clear in the fall of that year that this was not a coincidence, but rather our intention, a scandal erupted. And here, for the first time, we felt the enormous advantage of the thoroughness and inflexibility of the Ministry of Justice of Ukraine: because of that one word, “computer,” no one wanted to deal with them anymore. And so it remained.

In October 2004, the Instruction was approved. It was in force for over 13 years and was referred to many times in courts when considering the conclusions of polygraph examiners, even in cases that did not concern personnel issues.

A document has been preserved—an act of implementation, which was received by Tetyana Morozova, a candidate of sciences and police captain at the time, for her contribution to the development of the Instruction. One of the signatories of the act was the current Minister of Internal Affairs, then still a police captain, Ihor Klymenko.

Below is the implementation act, and once again, we wish everyone a happy holiday!