The Legal Status of a Convicted Person as a Constitutional Law Category: the Problem of Statutory Establishment of the Limits of Rights Restrictions in the Republic of Kazakhstan

Abstract

Since 1 July 2026, the Republic of Kazakhstan has been governed by the Constitution adopted at the republican referendum of 15 March 2026. The provision on the limitation of rights and freedoms is placed in Article 41 and retains the requirement that rights may be limited only by law. For a person serving a sentence of imprisonment, this requirement carries particular weight, since such a person's legal status consists entirely of restrictions. The aim of the study is to establish whether the existing manner of laying down restrictions on convicted persons satisfies that constitutional requirement. The academic significance of the work lies in the first constitutional framing, within national doctrine, of the question of the limits of subordinate regulation of a convicted person's status. The methodology comprises a complete formal legal examination of the Criminal Executive Code of the Republic of Kazakhstan and of the Internal Regulations of the institutions of the criminal executive system, an analysis of Law No. 307-VIII of 11 June 2026 bringing the codes into conformity with the Constitution, and a comparative assessment against the German model. The study establishes that the list of non-derogable rights has been reduced by the removal of the right to personal liberty; that bringing the Criminal Executive Code into conformity with the Constitution was largely a drafting exercise which left the articles on the rights and duties of convicted persons untouched; and that the Code refers to the Internal Regulations thirty-three times, while the Regulations themselves contain two hundred and twenty paragraphs and determine the scope of restrictions down to the daily routine approved by the head of the institution. The practical value lies in proposals to amend Articles 11, 16 and 130 of the Code and to raise regime restrictions to the level of statute.

The article is presented within the framework of the competition for grant funding for scientific and (or) scientific and technical projects for 2024-2026.  «IRN: AP23485634 Modern transformation of Kazakhstan's penitentiary system through the mechanism of public-private partnership».