Uridičeskaâ Nauka i Pravoohranitelʹnaâ Praktika (Dec 2014)
Penal law of the future: directions of reforming
Abstract
The most urgent problems of the penal legislation application are stated: social and economic support of post-penitentiary adaptation; lack of legal status of the RF subject in the penitentiary legal relations; direct dependence of many rights and legitimate interests of convicts upon judicial and administrative discretion; absence of a mechanism of implementing penal norms and subordinate normative legal acts, monitoring their implementation. The provisions of the RF Penal Code, contradicting the view established in the penal law theory regarding the penitentiary legal relations termination after the release of convict from further punishment, are revealed. The main technical and legal defects of the penal legislation in the inter-branch and interdisciplinary spheres are called (goals and objectives of the penal law are defined, goals and objectives of the punishment execution aren’t; principles of guilt and justice are fixed in the Criminal Code, but aren’t fixed in the Penal Code; incomparability of the guarantees of exercising the right to qualified legal assistance by ordinary citizens and convicts, etc.). The problem of the substitution of legislator by penal agency in regulating convicts’ rights and legitimate interests is stated. The provisions to be implemented in new penal legislation are expressed: 1) punishment in form of imprisonment should be in the very fact of isolation from society, otherwise the convict’s legal status shouldn’t differ from other citizens; 2) the list of prohibitions and restrictions for prisoners should be determined at the legislative level; 3) penal legislation should be exempt from evaluation terms and norms-exceptions, regarding convicts rights’ restrictions.
