Foreign experience of ensuring penitentiary safety is structurally studied in this article; the possibility of its use in domestic practice is discussed. The intrinsic and external aspects of penitentiary security, which are organically interconnected with each other, are highlighted. The General characteristic of modern criminal and Executive system of Russia is given, the problems of legal regulation of ensuring its safety existing at the moment are revealed. On the basis of the comparative legal method in combination with other methods of scientific cognition, the article considers foreign experience of ensuring the security of penitentiary institutions through differentiation of convicted persons and the conditions of serving sentences, and also given the wide use of advanced technical means of control and supervision in the process of correction. In this regard, some measures have been proposed to optimize the functioning of penitentiary institutions of the penal correction system of Russia in terms of penitentiary security. In order of discussion, subject to the review of best international practices are selected relevant for the domestic practice questions on the specifics of ensuring penitentiary safety in emergency situations, the models of private prison companies, the development of social control’s forms and supervision over the persons released from penitentiary institutions, the conclusions about the parameters of the perception of foreign experience in domestic practice are formulated.