This dissertation is a comprehensive study of the criminal executive principles of correction of persons sentenced to imprisonment in Ukraine. The work substantiates a number of provisions and conclusions that are new in conceptual terms and important for legal science, as well as for the activities of the bodies and institutions of the Ministry of Justice of Ukraine.
The analysis of the state and methodology of scientific research has shown that there is an insufficient study of the problem raised, which is manifested in the almost complete absence of modern and fundamental scientific research by domestic scholars devoted to a comprehensive and fully revealing study of the criminal executive principles of correction of persons sentenced to imprisonment in Ukraine.
The result of the study of international experience in the correction of prisoners was the identification of its best penitentiary practices for the purpose of their further implementation in the national penal legislation and the practice of penal authorities and penitentiary institutions in the correction of prisoners. This is in line with the European choice of reforming Ukraine's penal system and its transformation into a new European-style penitentiary system.
The study of the concept and content of the criminal executive principles of correction of persons sentenced to imprisonment in Ukraine made it possible to establish that during the years of Ukraine's independence, the national science of criminal executive law has not provided a real justification for the need to introduce the term «criminal executive principles» into criminal executive legislation. In this regard, the current reform of Ukraine's penal system and its transformation into a new European-style penitentiary system requires from the science of penal law not only legislative consolidation of the concept of «penal principles», but also an adequate understanding of the proposed definition of «correction of persons sentenced to imprisonment» and the possibility of introducing the latter into the new Penitentiary Code of Ukraine.
In this regard, on the basis of the features formulated by us, the following author's definition of the criminal executive principles of correction of persons sentenced to imprisonment is proposed – a system of multiple elements provided by legal acts(national or international), with the aim of implementing by the staff of penitentiary institutions of the State Criminal Execution Service of Ukraine and other non-governmental institutions a set of measures aimed at reforming prisoners sentenced to imprisonment during the period of their socialization, re-socialization and reintegration into society.
The study found that social and educational work as a means of reforming prisoners performs not so much a basic as an auxiliary function aimed at providing other means of reforming prisoners (regime, community service, general education and vocational training), which was supported by the respondents to our survey, including the staff of penal institutions, who put social and educational work as the main means of reforming prisoners in the last place.
The analysis of the institution under study made it possible to identify the main current problematic aspects of its provision and implementation, which include: lack of highly qualified employees of the social and psychological service; formal approach to social and psychological work with prisoners; residual principle of attention to departments of social and psychological work; and the need to expand the list of tools and forms of social and psychological work with prisoners.
The realization of the right to education by convicts has an extremely positive impact not only on the process of their correction in prisons, but also on the real possibility of returning to an independent, generally accepted social and normative life in society. Unfortunately, today the implementation of the educational process in penitentiary institutions, as well as in free society, is conditioned by a significant breakdown, which is primarily due not only to the lack of proper operating conditions in penitentiary institutions of the SPS of Ukraine, educational institutions, but also to the conditions of martial law in the penitentiary system, Therefore, among the urgent strategic issues that need to be addressed in the short term should be the expansion of opportunities for convicts to receive formal (general secondary, vocational, professional higher education), non-formal and informal education (including through the use of distance technologies).
