Preventing the commission of new crimes: on the issue of the content of the purpose of punishment

The article is devoted to the analysis of the internal content of the preventive purpose of punishment. The author draws attention to various approaches to determining the essence of the goal of preventing the commission of new crimes. In the criminal legal doctrine, the dominant point of view today is that the content of the preventive goal is both private and general prevention. Based on an analysis of the legislative wording of Article 2 and Article 43 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, taking into account the opinions of experts, the author of the article makes an attempt to change the existing approach to assessing the content of the considered purpose of criminal punishment. The result of the study is the conclusion that preventing the commission of new crimes being the purpose of criminal punishment is aimed at implementing private prevention, and general prevention is the main element of the preventive task of the criminal law.