The concept and legal nature of the institution of exemption from punishment and its service

The article reveals the concept and legal nature of the institution of exemption from punishment and its serving since this institution is closely related to both the purpose of punishment and the tasks of criminal responsibility in general. In this regard, exemption from serving a sentence requires a more detailed study. Domestic criminal law policy is focused on creating and ensuring the effective functioning of the system of measures of legal influence on illegal human behavior. The main criminal-legal consequence in these relations is criminal responsibility, and the most common form of its implementation remains punishment. According to the principle of inevitability of criminal responsibility and punishment, a person who has committed a criminal offense must be held criminally responsible, which, as a general rule, is implemented by imposing a punishment of a certain type and size. The imposition of punishment for a committed criminal offense is a legal consequence of finding a person guilty of a committed criminal offense. At the same time, in accordance with other principles of criminal law – humanity and economy of criminal repression measures – if there are conditions and grounds provided for in the Criminal Code of Ukraine, a person can be released from criminal liability or from punishment and its serving. Despite the fact that these institutions are applied in the presence of certain positive post-criminal behavior of the subject of a criminal offense and are a manifestation of compromise on the part of the state, they also have differences that are not clearly defined by the legislator, so this issue requires additional research and legal argumentation. The concept of exemption from criminal responsibility cannot be equated with exemption from responsibility in connection with the absence of a criminal element in the person’s actions or in the presence of circumstances that exclude the criminality of the act. The law provides for the possibility or obligation to release from criminal responsibility a person whose actions contain a certain element of the crime. The absence of a criminal element in a person’s actions excludes the possibility of release, because one cannot be released from criminal responsibility who did not commit the crime.