FEATURES OF INFORMAL BEHAVIOR NORMS IN THE CONDITIONS OF PLACES OF DETENTION

Abstract

The article deals with the specific features of informal behavior norms of convicts in prison. The interest in this problem is due to the presence of speciic, not found anywhere else (outside the camp of the former Soviet Union), informal relations between convicts serving a sentence of imprisonment. As a basis for the implementation of this kind of informal norms, the features of the hierarchical system of organization and management of the entire penitentiary society are determined. The authors attempt to systematically analyze the principles of functioning of informal norms of behavior, depending on the status and role settings, of different categories of convicts. Here, first of all, there is a kind of competition between the requirements of the current penal enforcement legislation, which determines the equality of all convicts before the law, and the "selectivity" of informal norms that can both "narrow" and "expand" the list of permissible forms of behavior depending on the informal status of the convict. The authors convincingly show that this kind of uneven distribution of informal norms of behavior, depending on the status-role position of a particular convict, creates real obstacles to the implementation of the current penal enforcement legislation to achieve the goals of the penalty of deprivation of liberty enshrined in the law. In this regard, the authors identify as an indicative group the category of convicts who are at the very "bottom" of the informal hierarchy existing in places of detention. Therefore, as a kind of alternative, the article deines convicts belonging to the so-called category - "rejected", according to some experts, quite a large part of the convicts. Here the mode of existence is at the lowest level. And it is this kind of polarization of relations that creates a visual image of the possible existence of those whose behavior contradicts the informal system of values of prisoners to imprisonment.