Dear colleagues!  We are glad to welcome You on our periodical’s pages. International penitentiary journal is a specialized information resource aimed at creating conditions for dynamic exchange of opinions, testing new ideas and presenting new views on the most pressing problems in the field of penitentiary theory and practice. The editorial Board sees its main task to create a high-quality scientific product, relevant and useful from the point of view of scientists, practitioners, public-spirited persons, students and post-graduates.Modern science is largely based on network international interactions. In our opinion, a specialized periodical devoted to the theory and practice of penitentiary systems’ functioning can become a platform that will mobilize professional community and create conditions for effective collaboration of all interested specialists from different countries. It is important to combine the experience and best practices of state officials and representatives of human rights organizations, public associations and research teams. It is important to spread the ideas, developments, advances that were obtained in countries with different legal systems, forms of government, national and cultural characteristics.The journal is not limited by topics connected with legal sciences. We believe that interdisciplinary research in the development of national penitentiary systems is an important area of development. Therefore, we invite to cooperation representatives of other branches of science, as well as groups of authors with broad competencies for original scientific articles’ publication. In our opinion, the international and interdisciplinary format is a distinctive feature of modern professional periodical.In order to simplify the possibilities of international communication, the editorial Board of our journal decided to move to the release of the bilingual version. Starting from the first issue of 2019, International penitentiary journal will be published in Russian and English. We hope that the new stage of development of our journal will create conditions for the formation of a new information agenda in the field of penitentiary science and practice. Alexey Vladimirovich RodionovEditor-in-Chief of International penitentiary journal,ScD (Economy)