Some Issues of Qualifying Actions Disorganizing the Activities of Institutions Providing Isolation From Society (Article 321 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation)

Crimes committed in correctional institutions pose a serious problem, undermining the penitentiary system, preventing the attainment of the punishment objective, destabilizing the situation in the institutions of confinement, adversely impacting the behavior of convicts. Currently, 58% of convicts in the institutions of confinement have been convicted more than once; 47% are serving their sentences for committing grave and especially grave crimes; numerous negative groupings are formed in correctional colonies, adhering to the criminal traditions. Two forms of criminal activity - organized and common - have merged in the places of confinement with their “ideology of the underworld”. Together with that, the ideology of the underworld results in a kind of “seizure of power”, when correctional colonies and their contingent begin to serve sentences by correctional law, i.e. nowadays, there is a confrontation of “us and them”. The correctional colonies operating according to the norms of “criminal subcultures” are defined as “black”, while those operating by the norms of the correctional law and the Internal Regulations are defined as “red”. The task of the “criminalist” is to spread their influence over the majority of convicts in order to seize power in correctional institutions. One of such actions of convicts in the institutions of confinement aimed at reorienting correctional colonies is disorganizing the activities of the institutions that ensure isolation from society. Though the actions to disorganize the activities make only 2-3% of the total number of crimes in the institutions of confinement, they are of a high social danger and cause significant harm to the correction of convicts and crime prevention. It should not be forgotten that an important role in the prevention of crimes in the institutions of confinement belongs to criminal law measures, since Part 1 of Art. 2 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation provides for the preventive function of criminal legislation, yet the guaranteed fight against crime depends on the content of the criminal law norm and the level of law enforcement. Based on the name of Art. 321 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, it is clear that this criminal law norm regulates and protects such social relations that are designed to ensure the activities of institutions executing criminal sentences in the form of imprisonment by court verdict.

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