Objectives of the criminal penalty system and means of their achievement

The system of criminal penalties always presupposes its objective. It is necessary to distinguish objectives of criminal penalty and objectives of the criminal penalty system. The formulation of the objectives and means of the penalty system depends on whether the approach to the definition of a system is descriptive or constructive. The system of penalties should be considered as a model - a system outlined in the law, and as measures - the totality of the applied measures of penalty execution. Four aspects of the penalty system should be singled out: the system-model and the system-measures in the descriptive approach, the system-model and the system-measures in the constructive approach. The objectives of the models and measures are the same regardless of the approach. What differs is means of their achieving. Means include penalties, their properties that do not exist independently and arise only from their interaction, and the correlation of the elements. Together they form the content of a system of penalties. The objective of the penalty system of the model is to differentiate punishments, to create a legal "field" for the subsequent individual adjustment of penalties, which allows taking into account the characteristics of the criminal and the criminal act committed by them, and to adjust penalties in the process of their execution. The system of penalties-measures can be considered at the general and individual levels. In the first case, its objective is to ensure the proper implementation of the model system, as well as to ensure the necessity and sufficiency of criminal punitive coercion adequate to the criminological situation (including the "typical" personality of the offender) and objective conditions. In the second case, the individualisation of the sentence depends on the behaviour of the convict, the objective possibility (impossibility) of the penalty execution, etc.

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