REFORMING THE CRIMINAL-EXECUTIVE SYSTEM OF UKRAINE: RETROSPECTIVE REVIEW

Abstract

The article provides the retrospective review of the process of reforming the Ukrainian criminal-executive system. It defines and analyzes the legislative provisions related to the changes and transformations of the correctional labor system of the Ukrainian SSR and the formation of the criminal-executive system during the last period of independence.

Taking into consideration the achievements and disadvantages of the previous years, the main directions of the development (modernization) of the national criminal-executive system at the present stage of developing the State are outlined, namely: the improvement of the organizational and functional structure and the system of managing the Criminal-Executive Service by restoring the central management system and its territorial bodies structure at the regional level; legislative consolidation of the grounds for the creation of the municipal and private penitentiary institutions; introduction of the management decentralization and the combined type (central and territorial) of managing the penal establishments and pre-trial institutions; optimization of the organizational and staff structure of the penitentiary bodies and institutions by securing the penal establishments of the minimum security level (semi-open) and  the penal establishments of the closed type (according to the penal sectors of different security levels and the sectors of pre-trial institutions) as the main types of the criminal-executive institutions; making changes to the article 61 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine for changing the order of serving sentences in the form of restraint of liberty, which would envisage the replacement of holding convicts at the penal establishments (open type correctional centers) without isolation from the open society by the supervision with the use of the electronic monitoring (home arrest); reorganization of penal establishments’ enterprises into the workshops and repayment (restructuring) of the hopeless debts of those enterprises; making the legislative changes, which would motivate the convicts to be involved in the socially useful work and to compensate the losses and damages caused by their crimes; legislative regulation of the preferences in selling the products, which are produced by the enterprises of the penitentiary institutions; increasing the level of legal and social protection of the penitentiary personnel; making the decision at the state level concerning one hundred percent budget financing of the costs of functioning of the Criminal-Executive Service and Probation.