THE MAIN PURPOSES OF PUNISHMENT IN THE UKRAINIAN CRIMINAL LAW OF THE 16th – 17th CENTURIES

Abstract

The article analyzes the content, main characteristics and features of the purpose of punishment in the criminal law of Ukraine in the sixteenth – seventeenth centuries. It is found that in the sixteenth century the purposes of punishment were to replenish the State treasury, to punish for a crime, to atone for sin, to reform the convicted person, to compensate for material damage to the victim or his/her relatives, and to prevent and intimidate. It is proved that the reasons which influenced the formation of these goals were the financial needs of the State, the awareness of the need for retribution for the crime committed, the influence of religion and
traditional views in Ukrainian society on the mandatory compensation for material damage, the need to educate convicts, the need to maintain law and order in the State, social inequality and the strengthening of the gentry in economic and political terms, and the reception of foreign law. It is found that in the second half of the seventeenth century the same purposes of punishment remained as in the previous period, which testifies to the genetic kinship of Ukrainian criminal law during the period under study and the stable development of the legal foundations which have developed in Ukrainian society. At the same time, there were some differences: the increased importance of customary law, the non-application in court practice of those provisions of the Lithuanian Statute of 1588 that enshrined the feudal principle of law- privilege, devaluation and minimization of intimidation as a purpose of punishment. This was a consequence of the change in the socio-economic and political situation in Ukraine after the national liberation war and the social revolution of the mid-seventeenth century (abolition of serfdom, elimination of large landownership), and a significant reduction in the influence of foreign law. On the basis of the purposes of punishment formalized in the sources of law of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, one can determine the nature of the punishment system of a particular period. During the period of publication of the I and II editions of the Lithuanian Statute, the system of punishment was based on private punishments that satisfied the material interest of the victim; the system of punishment that developed during the publication of the Lithuanian Statute of 1588 was based on public punishments with the predominance of elements of intimidation and isolation of criminals; in the second half of the seventeenth century, the system of punishment was of a mixed type.