Peculiarities and debatable aspects of the grounds for applying incentive measures to juvenile prisoners

Abstract

Incentive measures may be applied to juvenile convicts for conscientious behavior and attitude to work and education, active participation in the work of amateur organizations and educational activities (paragraph 1, part 1, article 144 of the Criminal Executive Code of Ukraine). However, the legislator does not define the content of most of the grounds for the application of incentive measures established by him, therefore the article clarifies the essence and peculiarities of each of them. The author analyzed the difference between such reasons and the reasons for applying incentive measures to adult convicts, defined in paragraph 1, part 1, article 130 CECU. The article establishes the meaning of the evaluative nature of the grounds for applying incentive measures. The author revealed the meaning of the terms "conscientious" and "active". The author considered the interpretation of the essence of the analyzed grounds in the Methodological recommendations of the State Department of Ukraine for Execution of Punishments regarding the organization of work related to the application of parole to persons deprived of their liberty by 2005, in the Methodological recommendations of the SDUEP for drawing up a characteristic of convicts by 2008 and in the Methodological recommendations for assessing the degree of correction of convicts by 1979. The article reveals various views of scientists regarding the understanding of the content and scope of the researched grounds for the use of incentive measures. Therefore, the author clarified the criteria for determining the presence of signs of conscientiousness in the convict's behavior and characterized the essence of the conscientious behavior of the convict, his conscientious attitude to work and education; and features of active participation of convicts both in the work of amateur organizations and in educational activities were revealed. The article states the need to more clearly formalize the content and scope of the grounds for applying incentive measures to juvenile convicts at the legislative level. The author proposed to legally distinguish 5 types of the following grounds: 1) conscientious behavior; 2) conscientious attitude to work; 3) conscientious attitude to education; 4) active participation in the work of amateur organizations; 5) active participation in educational activities.