Optimization Principles of Penal Execution System of Russia in the Context of European Penitentiary Practice

Abstract

Russia’s accession to the European Council and ratification of the European Convention on Human Rights caused considerable improvement of detainees’ living conditions. However, at present these transformations are inert and unstable. The framework for the development of the penitentiary system of the Russian Federation for the period until 2020 in terms of the study and dissemination of foreign experience in the area of execution of penalties is the subject-matter of research. The dissemination of this experience however can prove both progressive and regressive meaning for the optimization of domestic penitentiary system. The use of the method of legal-comparative studies, stressing the importance of the European example in execution of penalties, gives the opportunity to add some principles to the domestic penitentiary system, and among them: reciprocity of mutual interests of personality, society and state; feasibility to use foreign penitentiary experience; consistency that makes it possible to avoid conflicting between national and international law from the point of view of social economic facilities to realize humanitarian standards; the systematic issue as one of the capacity to suppose a clearly defined time sequence of publication and implementation of penitentiary norms. In the light of these principles the penitentiary policy of the Russian Federation is being criticized. Among applications of detainees to the European Court on Human Rights there is a tendency to increase the number of claims of violations of the detainees’ constitutional rights by the established prison security requirements. The results of this research testify about the possibility to use them while reviewing domestic conceptual framework of prison security which continues to express punitive claims primarily of the state to the detainee. Provisions of the European penitentiary rules are far from being fully realized in western prison systems, and that is why they are to be interpreted with the utmost care in legislative statements of the penitentiary legislation of Russia. The research is to conclude about the possibility to account on the critical remarks given in the article when working out on the Concept of modernization of the penal execution system (2021-2030).