Ideas of Russian Penal System Employees about the Official Behavior Pattern Forming a Humane Attitude towards Convicts

issues related to certain aspects of the professional activities of personnel of institutions and bodies executing criminal penalties in the context of the progressive process of humanization of the domestic penitentiary system are relevant. Features of the staff’s official activities when organizing the correctional process in places of detention are analyzed from a psychological point of view. Purpose: to identify the subjective component of professional activity through concretization of the ideas and views of penal system employees about humane treatment of convicts, followed by the choice of a socially approved pattern of official behavior. Methods: the author applied a psychological verbal and communicative method and used an author’s questionnaire specially developed for the purpose of the study. The study covered current penal system employees and public monitoring commission members (n=150, 3 focus groups). Results: attention is focused on the subjective side of the performance of official tasks by employees, which is based on existing functional behaviors, specifics of perception of situations in the process of exerting penitentiary influence on convicts, willingness to demonstrate humane attitude towards persons serving criminal sentences. The author determined respondents’ ideas about significant and insignificant personal qualities that contribute to or hinder the process of humanization in places of deprivation of liberty, their understanding of readiness and their definition of the official behavior pattern that allows them to effectively and systematically carry out the correctional process using humane methods of influence. Conclusion: employees’ choice of the official behavior pattern based on a humane attitude towards the personality of a convicted person is an effective tool for professional activity within the framework of general humanization of the social sphere. This makes it possible to expand possibilities of the ongoing penitentiary process, the core of which is the fundamental principles of the construction and implementation of socially approved practice of the execution of criminal penalties.