Criminal Law aspects of the institutions of restriction of liberty and probation: compliance with the leading European Law enforcement standards

Abstract

The article examines the conceptual foundations of interpretation and implementation of probation supervision measures in the general system of criminal punishment in Ukraine, and proves the need to regulate the mechanism of probation supervision at the legislative level as an alternative to restriction of liberty.The author establishes that the problem of creating an effective system of punishment for criminal offenses in Ukraine remains one of the most relevant and important topics of modern legal science. The current criminogenic situation in Ukraine, despite its minor positive trends, remains particularly dangerous for the civilized part of Ukrainian society, and thus negatively affects the internal security of our State. The author determines that it is possible to improve the process of execution of sentences through the introduction of a new type of punishment - probationary supervision.In most countries of the world, the prerequisite for the use of probation supervision was the introduction of restriction of liberty. As a new type of punishment in the post-Soviet space, it first appeared in the Model Criminal Code of the Commonwealth of Independent States. Under the national legislation of Ukraine, restraint of liberty has appeared in the Criminal Code of Ukraine of April 05, 2001. Punishment in the form of restraint of will consists in keeping a person in open-type penal institutions without isolation from society under conditions of supervision with the mandatory involvement of the convict in labor. The term of restriction of freedom is usually one to five years. In the course of the article, it was determined that restraint of liberty is an economically unprofitable type of punishment, because in Ukraine it has equated with deprivation of liberty. In addition, today, many academics and politicians criticize the restriction of free will because it does not help to correct the behavior of criminals. The author of the article determined that probation supervision is the convict’s duty to appear before a special state authority to report a change of residence. The convict must come to the institution at least once every three months.