The article outlines that in the pre-revolutionary period positive experience of labor activitywas accumulated for staff in the area of religious and moral support of convicted women with children in custody by distributing and reading books of moral and religious content, via interviews with ministers of church, teaching women and their children to read, write, craft, by establishing orphanages, both at prisons and outside of them. In the post-revolutionary period in Russia until the 60s of the 20th century, the main focus was kept on solving sanitary-hygienic and material-ware support issues during the detention of convicted women with children. The late 50s and early 60s of the XX century’s a historical period when on the one handimprisonment conditions of punishment for convicted women with children were improved, and on the other hand – formation of a special labor activity of the personnel of penitentiary system and development of approaches to psychological and pedagogical support this category of convicts began. In modern conditions of penitentiary system research by V. S. Mukhina can be considered as the program document on the organization and carrying out as a special labor activity by the personnel of psychological support of the condemned women with children held in children’s homes at correctional institutions. It contributed to the fact that since 2002, the Department of psychological services of the Central Directorate of Corrections ofthe Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation began to develop a «Program of rehabilitation of mothers and children in prison».