Dissertation for the degree of Candidate of Law in the specialty 12.00.08 – criminal law and criminology; criminal enforcement law. – National Academy of Internal Affairs, Kyiv, 2026.
The thesis is the first monographic study in Ukraine devoted to the issues of comparative and legal analysis of the system of criminal sanctions, unification, internal consistency and optimal construction of sanctions provided for by the criminal legislation, which reveals the peculiarities of the construction of the system of criminal sanctions in national and international legislation, analyzes the practice of applying sanctions by courts for criminal offenses of various degrees of severity, on the basis of which a number of proposals for improving the legislatively enshrined in Art. 51 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine of the system of punishments.
In order to determine further directions of development of criminal law science using historical-legal and comparative legal methods, the existence of grounds for improving its individual institutions regarding the formulation of criminal sanctions in the legislation of Ukraine has been established.
Attention is focused on the need to study criminal sanctions as part of the criminal law norm and as a structural element of the norm of the Special Part of the Criminal Code of Ukraine. By imposing sanctions, the legislative limits of criminal repression are determined. The main criteria for the classification of criminal sanctions in national and foreign legislation are revealed. It is determined that the classification of criminal sanctions of the norms of the Criminal Code of Ukraine should be carried out in accordance with the detailed characteristics of the sanctions system.
It is noted that all sanctions of the norms that provide for liability for serious and especially serious crimes are simple (no alternative) sanctions, since they include as the main punishment exclusively imprisonment with defined upper and lower limits or absolutely defined, as they provide for punishment for a period of 15 years (with the exception of 22 sanctions of particularly serious crimes, which alternatively provides for punishment in the form of life imprisonment) with the addition of deprivation of the right to hold certain positions or engage in certain activities and confiscation of property as additional punishments.
The need to make amendments and additions to the current criminal legislation of Ukraine in terms of expanding the number of sanctions, providing for alternative types of punishment to imprisonment and aimed at reducing the number of sanctions involving punishments related to the isolation of the convict from society, has been proven. It is indicated that the inclusion of a wider range of punishments, alternative to imprisonment, in the sanctions is due to a number of their advantages, as well as the absence of negative consequences for a person, which are inherent in imprisonment for a certain period. Emphasis is placed on preventing too wide a variation of sanctions by limiting the main penalties in its structure to three units.
A differentiated approach to the construction of sanctions of qualified and especially qualified criminal offenses is proposed, which should be consistently increased compared to the previous composition: if Part 1 of the article provides for punishment for up to 3 years of imprisonment, then Part 2 should provide, for example, from 3 to 5 years, and Part 3 – from 5 years and above).
It is determined that in order to improve the content of alternative sanctions, when specifying the term of serving any punishment, its term should be clearly indicated, avoiding the wording «for the same period».
On the basis of the study of problematic issues of formulation and content of criminal sanctions in national and international legislation, specific proposals for improving the system of criminal sanctions and optimizing the practice of their implementation have been formulated.
