Abstract: the article is devoted to detailed review and analysis of scientific attitudes shared by the majority of scientists concerning the question of the nature, purpose and objectives of criminal punishment. The reasons and main features of two dominant approaches to criminal penalty as socio-legal institute – the absolute and utilitarian – are pointed out. The attention is drawn to the fact that conceptual frame of absolute doctrines of criminal punishment cannot be reduced only to the rule of the Talion, which presupposes the literal proportionality of punishment and crime. The conclusion is made that contemporary criminal penalty as the predominant resource in combating crime, which keeps the enforced and reimbursable essence, can and should pursue concrete practical goals and objectives. The article focuses on the two-fold nature of criminal punishment as an act of state coercion and resource, when the threat of its use enforces refraining from committing socially dangerous acts. The author expressed reservations about the current possibility to refrain from classic criminal punishment, and instead to use the variety of extra-legal methods of penalty practice, which affect natural human rights and have no borders of the intervention into the area of personal freedom, health and immunity.
Keywords: criminal punishment, paradigm, penological knowledge, retributive justice, retribution, criminal repression, the purpose of punishment, the grounds of criminal punishment, penological doctrine, the essence of criminal punishment.