Abstract: The legal regulation of work among convicts was different during various stages of Russian statehood. Corrective Labor Code of the RSFSR in 1970, stipulated the obligation of work for all categories of convicted persons including the persons with the first and second group disabilities and pensioners. They were deprived of vacation right and time record was not taken into account for convicts, except for the cases specifically provided by law. Convicts serving a sentence in a correctional labor colony of a special regime performed usually some heavy work. Due to the drastic reform of the correctional labor legislation and the adoption of RF Law “About the amendments and additions to the RSFSR labor code, the RSFSR Criminal Code, RSFSR Criminal Procedure Code” which was focused on international standards of prisoner treatment, the legal status of prisoners in Russia changed for the better in terms of prisoner socio-economic rights implementation. Operating time was considered as a time record, convicted were entitled to have a vacation, work became a voluntary one for disabled and pensioners, etc. Nevertheless, the principles of making convicts work remained unchanged. In this study, the basic principles of convict labor enforcement are doubted. Firstly, why prisons do not combine the task of convict correction with the task of profit making from their labor? Moreover, in 2015, the Federal Penitentiary Service of Russia plans to involve convicts serving imprisonment in penal colonies for the construction of a bridge on the Kerch Peninsula. Besides the issue of private prisons establishment in Russia is considered from time to time where one of the goals is to make profit. Secondly, why the labor in prisons should be mandatory, why not provide an experiment on a law basis concerning the principle of voluntary work among convicts?