Theoretical and methodological foundations for forensic commodity examination of garment products

The examination of garment products is a popular type of forensic commodity expertise in proceedings related to the protection of the interests of Ukrainian producers, business entities in the sale and rental of garment products, as well as the investigation of offences related to export and import operations. Based on the study of the legislative framework for conducting forensic commodity research of garment products, as well as regulatory documents on the methodology for assessing the quality of garments for various purposes, the author states that there is still no unified list of control objects to be studied in the course of garment examination. The article is devoted to the problems of methodology for forensic commodity examination of garments. It has been established that the lack of unified terminology causes differences in the interpretation of methodological guidelines for conducting examinations and differences in the interpretation of research results. The fundamental differences between the purpose, composition of materials and market conditions of a particular type of garment can significantly affect the choice of research methods. In this regard, the article considers the nomenclature of objects of forensic commodity examination of garments, which makes it possible to streamline the expert’s actions in accordance with the specifics of the object of study. The nomenclature identifies the following groups of indicators for the examination of garments: compliance of the product and control label details with the requirements of regulatory documentation, correspondence of appearance, adequacy of the type of materials used for sewing the garment, safety of materials, quality of fit of the garment, quality of manufacture of the garment, correspondence of linear measurements to nominal values, and market value of identical (similar) goods