The article aims to reveal key trends in the studies of the problems of criminal punishment based on the analysis of Russian dissertation theses in the past decade (2010–2019). The authors stress that the problems of punishment are «eternal» for Russian and Western doctrines of criminal law, although there is some difference in their research trends. The authors conclude that Russian doctrine preserves continuity in its definition of punishment as a major category of criminal law, as well as of its attributes and goals. In 1990–2000s there were some attempts to renounce the penal nature of punishment. In the past decades this «bias» has been overcome and practically all authors recognize the priority of the penal character (content) of criminal punishment. At the same time, the doctrine incorporated new ideas regarding the understanding of the goals of punishment, their hierarchy and the actual possibilities of achieving them. The authors note that the positive feature of the Russian doctrine is the substantiation of the «functional» theory of building a system of punishments in criminal legislation. On the other hand, researchers have come to a disappointing conclusion regarding the breach in the orderly structure of the system of punishments. The analysis of Russian dissertation theses has shown that in 2010–2019 most attention was focused on «final» punishments (capital punishment and life imprisonment), imprisonment for a certain period of time, some punishments not connected with the deprivation of liberty (limitation of liberty, obligatory work). The authors point out that there remains a discrepancy in the understanding of the legal nature, purpose and effectiveness of these types of punishment (primarily, capital punishment, which is preserved in criminal legislation).
Kibalnik et al. (2019) studied this question.