Russian Holidays - Day of Workers of the Penitentiary System of the Ministry of Justice of Russia

Every year on March 12, specialists of the penal system of the Russian Ministry of Justice celebrate their professional holiday. The founding year of the holiday is 2010. The system called the penal system can be called penitentiary. The Latin term is translated as “repentance.” Professionals involved in it have to work with a restless contingent. These are citizens who broke the law and now must be held accountable. Simply put, they are criminals. Therefore, employees of penal institutions spent a long time in the department of another law enforcement agency, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, along with the police. The decision to reform the organization of the state in 1993 marked the transition of those who implement punishments to the authority of the Ministry of Justice. The date chosen as a holiday was March 12, in honor of the command of Emperor Alexander the Second Liberator. The monarch, on that spring day in 1879, signed a decree requiring the creation of a prison department. This law enforcement agency predetermined the beginning of the formation of the Russian penitentiary system. Moreover, the institution of execution of punishments began as a single one throughout the country - first an empire, then an independent republic, then a republic within a union, and now a federation. The state has assumed the functions of maintaining order before. Their beginnings are described in the Code of Laws, collections of codes of laws of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. But, if then the state punished on the principle of edification and intimidation, fined, put on trial, condemned and executed, now specialists of the penitentiary authorities strive to return erring citizens to the structures of a full-fledged society with full-time employment. Ideally, completely repentant. At the same time, workers implementing punishments for crimes risk their lives. During the celebration, in addition to receptions, concerts and award presentations, specialists from the penal system of the Russian Ministry of Justice pay tribute to the memory of colleagues who died in the line of duty. After all, their professional calling includes preventing any violations of the law, which is associated with imminent dangers.