Forced Labor: Prospects, Limits and Risks of Development

Introduction: The Concept for the Development of the Penal System of the Russian Federation for the Period up to 2030 sets the task to significantly increase a number of convicts serving forced labor. Purpose: to analyze prospects for the fulfillment of this task, the possibility of changing rules for the appointment of forced labor established by criminal law. Results: the proposals on liquidation of penal settlements as a kind of competitor to forced labor are analyzed, and the conclusion about the prematurity of such a step is argued. Risks of hasty expansion of the use of forced labor associated with the deterioration of law and order in the locations of correctional centers are considered. It is concluded that the expansion of judicial practice of the use of forced labor can be carried out in two stages. At the first stage, it should be limited, first, to eliminating the alternative in assigning this type of criminal punishment, and second, to increasing a number of crimes providing for forced labor as a sanction along with imprisonment. Judicial practice will be given the opportunity for wider discretion in the appointment of forced labor, which will entail an increase in the number of convicts in correctional centers and a reduction in the number of convicts in penal colonies. At the second stage, it is reasonable to reform penal settlements complexly, within the framework of optimizing the entire system of criminal penalties and institutions that execute them. As part of this stage of the reform, forced labor should lose its specialized status of punishment only for able-bodied convicts. Accordingly, it is necessary to adjust the name of this punishment, which would cover all the punitive content of this punishment.