The article is devoted to the consideration of certain aspects influencing the effectiveness of the use of punishments alternative to deprivation of liberty. In recent decades the criminal law policy of democratic states has tended to favor punishments alternative to imprisonment. Most criminal justice professionals spoke out against the widespread use of imprisonment. In many countries, the widespread use of alternative punishments in addition to humanitarian considerations is based on pragmatic arguments for saving costs of imprisonment and its consequences.In modern conditions, a stable feeling is created that legislative activity to change the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation in one part is much faster than the real needs of society, which among other things generates a certain number of «dead norms» unclaimed by practice; And on the other hand it lags far behind these requirements, which causes a multiple change in the same legal norms, their «adaptation» to the relatively rapidly changing social and legal conditions.The article draws attention to the fact that individual circumstances related to the criminal policy of the state in a specific historical period and the inconsistent, ill-conceived introduction of numerous changes and additions to the current criminal legislation, with legislative regulation and the practice of applying incentives And penalties for persons serving sentences, alternative to deprivation of liberty, with an unjustified extension of the judiciary's discretion With the legality and validity of the verdict handed down by the court and, accordingly, the correctness of the definition and appointment of a criminal punishment measure, with the proportionality of the types of punishments in alternative sanctions of criminal law.