Citizen as a Participant in Probation

National and global practice of criminal justice indicates the importance of effective participation of civil society representatives in the prevention of crime among persons released from penitentiary institutions and convicted without imprisonment. However, despite the adoption of the Federal Law “On Probation in the Russian Federation” there is no legal mechanism to stimulate and ensure this direction of citizens' activity. The aim of the research is theoretical substantiation of optimal organisational and legal conditions for the involvement of individual citizens in the prevention of criminological recidivism by improving a number of provisions of the Russian Criminal Code, the Russian Criminal Executive Code and the Law on Probation. Analysing domestic and foreign experience, as well as the relevant legislation of the Soviet period, the author substantiates the conclusion that the real preventive activity of civil society representatives is largely conditioned not by general declarations about “involvement”, but by the level of organisational work of all links of the criminal justice system, specific legal opportunities and incentives. Relatively functionally separate interrelated areas of non-state (“potestar”) prevention of recidivism in this area are “public influence”, “public assistance” and “public opposition”. In the considered context, such organisational and legal forms of participation of individual citizens deserve special attention as their personal surety in case of conviction without deprivation of liberty, parole or replacement of punishment with a more lenient one; activities of public inspectors of penal inspections; assistance of citizens in restoring positive social ties of convicts in places of deprivation of liberty before their release.