Criminal punishment: history and modernity

The article discusses criminal punishment in historical and modern aspects. The term «criminal punishment» is multidimensional both in everyday and scientific understanding, functional properties are diverse. Without punishment there is no crime, and without crime there is no punishment. Hence the familiar phrase «crime-punishment». The role of criminal punishment in countering socially dangerous acts, its effectiveness causes discussion. The issues of sentencing at different times have always been and are receiving a lot of attention, both from legal scholars and from practitioners. The improvement of modern legislation in terms of criminal punishment gives reason to say that there is an understanding and research of the problems of the application of criminal punishment in modern society. Punishment expresses, on behalf of the State and society, a negative legal, social and moral assessment of the criminal act and the offender and consists in the deprivation or restriction of rights and freedoms provided for in criminal legislation. The purpose of this study is to study criminal punishment, its goals and practice of application, consideration of historical prerequisites. To achieve this goal, it is necessary: to investigate the institution of sentencing in the history of development, to study the current state of the institution of punishment, its goals and practice of application in modern Russia. The methodological basis of the work was made up of general scientific methods (historical, logical, system-structural, comparative legal analysis).