Procedure and conditions of life executing punishment: essence and tendencies of reform in criminal executive legislation of Ukraine

Abstract

The article is devoted to the consideration of essence and tendencies of reforming the criminal-executive legislation of Ukraine concerning the procedure and execution and serving life imprisonment conditions. Certain debatable provisions, both theoretical and legal, concerning procedure and conditions of life service executing punishment are considered. In particular, at-tention is paid to the problems of legal nature and objectives of life imprisonment, priority of aims and opportunities to achieve correction (resocialization) of convicts, appropriate legal mechanism (tools) that would prevent irreversible negative changes in convict’s personality, which occurs under the influence of indefinite isolation. Particular attention is paid to the analysis of more specific problems related to criminal-executive criteria for the perception of life imprison-ment as subspecies of imprisonment for a certain period; systemic content ratio of general peni-tentiary norms, which determine the legal status of convicts sentenced to life imprisonment, and special ones, which should reproduce peculiarities of regime requirements of penitentiary institutions of different security levels (in particular, medium and maximum). It is proved that clarity, completeness and system-legal balance will be facilitated by the formal reproduction in the law of classification of all criminal-executive norms of Chapter 22 of the Criminal Executive Code (hereinafter–CEC) (based on a certain criterion) into norms of general and special significance, which in turn should be divided into the following subtypes. General penitentiary provisions, which determine the initial legal status of persons sentenced to life imprisonment, provide a list and features of the rights, legitimate interests, responsibilities of convicts, ways (mechanism) to comply with safe conditions of detention, etc. General penitentiary provisions, which define the basic principles for implementation of changes in detention conditions during execution and serving a sentence (essence, tasks, forms, general requirements for material grounds for application, procedural issues of progressive system implementation, definition of disciplinary system). Particular attention to specific characteristics on the gender basis is determined, inter alia, by different levels of security of institutions where punishment takes place, and accordingly by different pro-cedures and conditions of detention, the legal status of convicts.