The nature and humanity of life imprisonment are considered in the scientific sense. The article clarifies the concept of life imprisonment in accordance with the available legal and scientific sources, which have a conceptual nature: “Life imprisonment is the most severe measure of coercion of the main types of punishment, which according to Art. 64 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine is established for committing particularly serious criminal offenses and is applied only in specially provided cases in accordance with this Code, if the court does not consider it possible to apply imprisonment for a certain period. The analysis of the legislation is carried out, the international experience of execution of this type of punishments is studied. The necessary statistical analysis data are given. Proposals are being made to improve the execution of life imprisonment. The criminological characteristics of the convicts are given, some proposals are made to optimize the correctional process. The signs of socio-demographic, moral-psychological, criminal-legal and socialrole properties of those sentenced to life imprisonment are determined. Arguments of inexpediency of application of punishment in the form of life imprisonment are resulted. Based on the study, we conclude that life imprisonment has a number of shortcomings that need to be addressed. This necessitates the improvement of its implementation or the abolition of this punishment
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