Determinants of the activities of NKVD officers in the 1930s regarding to the specifics of implementing the principle of legality in correctional labor institutions

The article deals with the incidents of fight against the criminal element in places of imprisonment in the 30s of the last century in the USSR that is of great importance in the period of building up the country’s industrial power with the use of convict labor. The article discusses the events of counteraction to the activities of correctional labor institutions by criminal elements who tried to establish their own rules there, not obeying the legal requirements of law enforcement officers, disrupting production plans.The neutralization of the «thieves’ community « took place on the basis of current Soviet legislation and was expressed in the isolation of leaders and active accomplices of criminal groups, and their transfer to remote, specialized correctional labor camps.