The controversial issues of the implementation of clemency in the legislation of Ukraine and foreign countries

The article deals with issue of clemency and its controversial application in Ukraine. Thus, the subject of our study is the analysis of the norms of domestic law that regulate the grounds and procedure of applying clemency to people who committed the crime and sentenced to imprisonment. The practical experience of the application of clemency in foreign countries is analyzed. Particular attention is paid to the comparison of the norms of Ukrainian and foreign legislation in the practice of clemency with revealing its disadvantages and advantages. In particular, the regulations of the Constitutions, the Criminal Codes and other normative acts that refer to the issue of clemency are examined. The study demonstrates that legislative support for the implementation of the clemency in Ukraine is vague as from the standpoint of the theory of law and from the point of view of procedural reliability and transparency of legal decision-making. The study has confirmed the weaknesses of the implementation the mechanism of clemency for people who are sentenced to life imprisonment. It has been found that the practice of applying clemency in Ukraine is accompanied with direct violations of the requirements of normative legal acts. The article provides the analyzes of statistics on the number of people who have been granted the clemency in Ukraine and abroad during 2010-2019. The study has confirmed that the issue of clemency is rare practice nowadays in comparison to the previous years. The results of our research suggest that the application of clemency in all countries is not only justified by the considerations of humanism but the institution of clemency also has a practical purpose, it can contribute to the achievement of the specific political goals. The mechanism of clemency has become an up-to-date issue nowadays in Ukraine legislation, thus the study suggests a number of amendments to the legislation of Ukraine to improve the downsides of the legislative regulation of the mechanism of clemency in the criminal legislation.