Cultural-Historical Jurisprudence as a Meta-theory in the Field of General Humanitarian Training of Penal System Employees

general humanitarian training of penal system employees should be built taking into account understanding of law as an independent meta-structure. It includes both available knowledge and a whole complex of cognitive tools used at different levels of scientific knowledge. A metatheory is one of the elements of this cognitive system. It brings liberation from conceptual layers and reveals a true meaning of the phenomenon. Cultural-historical jurisprudence can be considered a legal metatheory. One of its developers was recently deceased Professor Yu.A. Vedeneev. Methods: abstraction, induction, empirical analysis, logical reduction, general scientific and philosophical justification. Purpose: to demonstrate capabilities of cultural-historical jurisprudence in the field of overcoming methodological isolation of certain areas in jurisprudence using heuristic potential of the theory of legal anthropology and sociology of law. Conclusion: some aspects of cultural and historical jurisprudence can be used in the penitentiary sphere, for example, in legal education of convicts; to understand a system of relations in the thieves’ environment; to describe various aspects of the delinquency theory; to overcome conflict situations in the penitentiary sphere, etc. Thus, one of the areas of cultural-historical jurisprudence, anthropology of law, is aimed at studying man as the central element of legal communication, the primacy of man in relation to the law. It is this emphasis in legal education that can allow a convicted person to accept law as a value. The study of patterns of forming relationships in the thieves’ environment can receive a new impetus due to a specific object of legal anthropology, such as the thieves’ law. The anthropology of law makes a significant contribution to the formation of the theory of crime and the disclosure of meta-problems of crime. Another component of the subject of cultural-historical jurisprudence, sociology of law, includes legal conflictology as one of the areas. Its knowledge is necessary to overcome conflict situations that accompany penal system employees in their professional activities.