The correctional labour camp was a kind of penitentiary institution. Under various names and forms of ownership, they exist practically all over the world (due to the need to reduce the costs of the penitentiary system by means of its self–sufficiency and the transformation of penitentiary institutions into independent subjects of economic activity), but with the name "correctional labour camp" (Russian: исправительно–трудовой лагерь), institutions of this type existed only in the Soviet Union.