Compulsory Labor as a Social Compromise in Modern Criminal Law Relations

Abstract

The domestic criminal policy at the present stage of its development is oriented, in general, to the humanization of criminal legislation. One of the key means of ongoing humanization is the institution of criminal punishment, the norms of which determine the various types of measures of state coercion implemented against perpetrators of a crime. The state authorities, providing a policy of humanization of criminal legislation, are focused on introducing new types of criminal penalties, alternative to imprisonment, as well as on expanding the practice of appointing and applying punishments that do not imply isolation from society. Criminal penalty in the form of forced labor is officially declared an alternative type of criminal punishment, which in itself is a legal decision that is not characteristic of the traditional classical doctrine of the criminal punishment system. Analysis of the provisions of the criminal law, revealing the essence of forced labor as a criminal penalty, not related to the isolation of the convicted person from society, indicates a rather high degree of his severity, which exceeds the severity of imprisonment served in a penal colony. On the basis of the socio-legal and penitentiary characteristics of criminal penalty obtained in the course of the study, in the form of forced labor, a conclusion is formulated on the erroneousness of the legislative decision to include them in the modern criminal punishment system.