The work clarifies the essence and content of public control in the sphere of execution of punishments in Ukraine, identifies existing problems in connection with it, and develops scientifically based ways to solve them.
In particular, with the help of the historical-legal method and the application of the criterion of the same name concerning knowledge of the essence of public control in the sphere of execution of punishments in Ukraine, the state of development at the scientific level of the problems existing in practice has been classified into several periods, namely:
1. December 1970 – August 1991, when the problem investigated in this dissertation was regulated by laws and other legal acts of both the former USSR and the Ukrainian SSR.
The main source in the mentioned historical segment of the functioning of bodies and institutions for the execution of punishments was the Criminal Code of the Ukrainian SSR, adopted on December 23, 1970. At the same time, as the study of the content of this Code showed, there were no legal norms in either its General or Special parts that would relate to the issues of public control over the process of execution – the serving of
punishments, which to a certain extent became one of the consequences of the state (correctional and punitive) politics in the specified field of social relations, as well as the absence of any manifestations of civil society.
2. August 1991 – July 2003, when the issues of the specified type of social activity were regulated by the partially amended criminal law of Ukraine. At the same time, attention is drawn to the fact that though in 1970, in Art. 9 of the Corrective Labour Code (CLC) of Ukraine the legal principles of public participation in the correction and re-education of convicts were established, the specified norm was not changed until 2003, which was presented in this work as an additional argument regarding the conclusion about the determination of the causes and conditions that negatively affected the formation and development of the public control institute in the field of
execution of punishments. In addition, in connection with this, the following legal fact draws attention, namely: part 2 of Art. 9 of the CLC stated that the forms and procedure of public participation in the correction and re-education of convicts were established by this Code and other laws of Ukraine.
3. January 2004 – December 2010, when the sphere of execution of punishments was managed by the State Department of Ukraine for the execution of punishments, as the central body of the state executive power in this field of public activity, which was defined as in Art. 11 of the Criminal Executive Code (CEC), as well as in Art. 1 of the Law of Ukraine "On the State Criminal Executive Service of Ukraine".
In the investigated period, the State Department of Ukraine for the execution of punishments did not fully comply with the legislative requirements for ensuring the implementation of public control over the observance of the rights of convicts during the execution of criminal punishments, which, in particular, stemmed from the content of Part 2 of Art. 25 of the CEC of Ukraine, which came into force in January 2004, and other laws
regulating the specified type of social activity (such as: "On freedom of conscience and religious organizations"; "On public associations"; "On bodies and services in children's affairs and special institutions for children"; etc.), as well as secondary legal sources ("Regulations on supervisory commissions and guardianship boards at special educational institutions").In addition, since the time of the complete withdrawal of the bodies and the
Department of execution of punishments from the subordination of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine in 1999 and the independent functioning of this Department in the
system of state bodies of executive power until the time of its liquidation in December 2010, the State Department of Ukraine for the execution of punishments actually reduced
the content of the subject regarding the publicity of its activities, providing the appropriate restrictive measures for the information that was open to the public during 1991-1998.
4. 2011-2021, when at first partially (2010-2012), and then fully in 2012, the Ministry of Justice of Ukraine at the legislative level took over the functions of the central executive body implementing state policy in the field of execution of punishments in Ukraine, and carried out in this direction a number of organizational-management, normative-legal, material-technical and other changes in the specified field of public activity.
