On the compulsory labor of convicts

The article deals with the problems of the compulsory labor of convicts, attitude to the labor of convicts by the example of the soviet corrective labor legislation and international legal regulation; the prospect of eliminating the compulsory labor now is considered. It is obvious that the convict's right to work in the conditions of imprisonment is missing. In the Soviet period, this right was enshrined in the Constitution. Now neither international law nor criminal-executive legislation of the Russian Federation gives the convicted the right to work, because they only give the definition of labor freedom limits. Today, the establishment of the right to work would mean the state's responsibility to provide it to anyone who would like to receive it. It is hardly possible in a market economy. Achieving absolute identity of the features of penitentiary and labor relations is difficult. To accept the fact of labor relations, it is sufficient to have at least one significant feature (voluntariness, payment) and any number of optional features. Relations connected with the labor of convicts in prisons, are labor relations, but the special basis of their establishment, development, change and termination must be set in the Criminal Correctional Code of the Russian Federation. The enshrinement of the basis will lead labor relations of convicts to the content of labor relations, limiting their form with the exceptions fixed in the criminal correctional legislation. To motivate and encourage convicts to work on a subjective level requires broad objective features such as a significant number of workplaces. It is necessary to work out legal development incentives that would be applicable to convicts positively related to work. The lack of legal incentives in the criminal correctional legislation does not encourage convicts to work, so the volunteer spirit and motivation to work will be lost. The implementation of voluntary labor with free labor contracts requires going further and developing a number of legal, economic, social and educational tools for their introduction to the penal system. At present, there is no developed system of diverse jobs, so it complicates the implementation of incentives for a conscientious attitude to labor. Now, neither the Concept of the Development of the Criminal Correctional System of the Russian Federation until 2020, nor the current level of the development of the criminal correctional system allows to conclude that the legislator is ready to exclude the compulsory labor of convicts, who are in prisons, from the Criminal Correctional Code of the Russian Federation.

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