On legal regulation of the labour of convicts in correctional institutions of the Russian Federation

The article dwells on the legal basis of the labour of convicts in correctional institutions in the Russian penal system Russia and their correspondence with the international standards. The author analyses the modern organizational and legal forms of involvement of convicts to labour, and specificity of its legal status in comparison with the labor of free citizens. The article reveals the basic socio-economic, organizational and legal problems of using convicts' labour for their re-socialization. Labour has always held one of the most important places in the system of treatment of convicts in Russia. During the Soviet era of 1970s, due to the work of convicts, the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR was the fifth in terms of production among industrial ministries of the USSR. Nowadays, in spite of the dramatic decline in the production capacity, the production in the penal system makes more than 30 billion rubles annually. The legal regulation of the convict labour in prisons is performed by two branches of law - labor and penitentiary. The latter reflects only the specific features of the convicts' legal status in their work. The convict labor is regulated in accordance with the international standards of treatment of prisoners. Those are wrong who believe that compulsory convict labour contradicts the Constitution and international instruments. However, there is no agreement in the law on how to treat the involvement of minors in work. The reduced number of imprisonment sentences deteriorates the quality of convicts, their educational level as well as the level of professional training. Modernization of production requires substantial investment. As there are fewer convicts involved in working activities, the legal situation becomes worse. Therefore, the problems of labour and mode of punishment are closely interrelated. Remuneration for convicts is regulated by legal acts, but due to the non-fulfillment of production norms and impossibility to provide enough work on a full-time basis, the salary received by convicts is low. It is necessary to refuse from the term "use of labour" in the legislation and practice as contradictory to the humanistic nature of the modern penal system. It is also difficult to speak about the direct "labour adaptation" in prisons, because imprisonment in itself is really maladaptive for the convict. On the other hand, it is necessary to expand the grounds and the period of improvement of the convicts in unpaid public services and amenities, in case they are not engaged in the paid employment.

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