The Legal Basis of Ensuring Security in the Penitentiary System

Abstract

There is no doubt that the work of any complex system, including the penitentiary system, is based on law. The degree of its effectiveness in regulating public relations equals the degree to which it ensures the security of this system’s functioning, creates conditions for realizing the basic rights and lawful interests of convicts and people in remand centers as well as the rights and liberties of the penitentiary system’s employees or persons that visit detention facilities. The examined issue is especially urgent because penitentiary institutions are places that are most susceptible to the negative influence of criminal organizations both from the inside and from the outside. In connection with this, maintaining security is an essential condition for the functioning of the penitentiary system, for its ability to perform state tasks of enforcing the penitentiary policy, for creating prerequisites for the positive development of the person, the society and the state. The authors describe the security condition of the penitentiary system institutions and outline the existing and emerging positive and negative trends accompanied by statistical data; they also note that although the level of criminal threat from convicts has risen, the situation in the penitentiary institutions remains complex but stable and under control thanks to the purposeful work of Russian Penitentiary Service’s employees. The analysis of the legal basis for the work of the penitentiary system allowed the authors to show the necessity of improving various normative legal acts which regulate its functioning. They pay attention to the problems of improving the guarantees of the realization of the victim’s rights, of achieving the goals of criminal punishment, improving the cooperation of various state agencies, continuity in achieving the goals (integration in society) as well as the tasks of post-penitentiary re-socialization, etc. All these issues are examined within the framework of international standards and rules while taking into consideration national specifics and interests of Russia. The conducted research of the correlation between law and security reflects the actual situation in the system, the impact that law has on law enforcement practices and, correspondingly, on the state of security in penitentiary institutions, the society and the state as a whole.