Legal regulation of financial support of penitentiary institutions of the Russian empire

Introduction: on the basis of the norms of the criminal executive legislation challenges of financing of penitentiary institutions of the Russian Empire are considered, tendencies to improvement of the prison maintenance by the beginning of XX century are revealed. Materials and Methods: the basis of the study is the normative acts issued in the pre-revolutionary period, official documents of the National Archives of the Republic of Tatarstan. The following methods are used: dialectical, formal-legal, comparative-historical, analysis and synthesis. Results: based on the analysis of the Russian Empire legislation, as well as archival documents, the author comes to the conclusion that the considered period, the financing of places of detention were extremely poor.In the nineteenth century, this situation changes, in addition to the budget funding there were other sources of income allocated for the prison maintenance and the needs of the penitentiary institutions. Discussion and Conclusions: despite the state policy aimed at improving the performance of penitentiary institutions, implemented through the prison care societies, the amount of funding was insufficient for the normal functioning of their activities.