Psychology of prisoners and organization of their resocialization in penitentiary institutions

The article provides a psychological analysis of the organization of social and educational activities in penitentiary institutions and examines the specifics of psychologists’ work in such institutions with prisoners in terms of its optimization. The general status (legal capacity) of a convict does not depend on the qualification of the crime committed or their stay in places of detention. It is determined that the non-personalized quality (feature) of a convict is his general legal status of «convict», not his subjective ability, behavior, personal views, or position in society. An important stage for each convict is his resocialization, namely the process of consciously returning to normal life and adapting to society. Social and educational work in penitentiary institutions is based on the creation of effective mechanisms for the rehabilitation and resocialization of convicts. The process of resocialization includes changes in the personality of the convict, changes in their consciousness and the formation of an attitude to law-abiding life. The process of psychocorrection and resocialization of discharged prisoner is a new adaptation of the personality to the social midst, adaptation of norms, laws, traditions, customs which were lost earlier or undergone considerable distortion on condition that one was imprisoned. Thus from this stage it will be depended the further lawful and vice versa criminal vital activity of the person. And here, an important role is played by the process of psychocorrection, which allows to eliminate any shortcomings in the development of the convict’s personality. In this case, the convict must be psychologically ready and motivated to change their lifestyle. In the context of the presented work, the author’s position on the diversity of the object and subject of penitentiary psychology as a separate sub-branch of legal psychology is expressed. This branch of psychology studies the psychological facts, patterns and underlying mechanisms of behavior of convicts in penitentiary institutions, the formation of a socio-psychological model of re-education of prisoners and changes in their negative social and personal attitudes, as well as the development of effective mechanisms of socio-psychological influence used by the staff of penitentiary institutions in the process of executing various types of punishment.