The article deals with such concepts of criminal law as crime, punishment, and responsibility, their distinctive features, and their correlation with criminal law institutions. The authors believe that the categories of criminal law express its political foundations. However, without criminal law institutions, these categories would remain only legal symbols, and the political foundations would be empty declarations with no practical significance for each specific case of crime and punishment. The institutions of criminal law serve as criteria for assessing the legal significance of various factual circumstances and implement the provisions reflected in the main criminal law categories. Criminal law institutions can be classified depending on the category, e.g., crime, punishment, or responsibility, as well as on the political function, e.g., service institutions and intermediary institutions. Service institutes include belong to the following categories: Crime – a) guilt; b) stages of crime; c) multiplicity of crimes; Punishment – a) the system of punishments (Articles 44, 45, 88 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation); b) sentencing; c) exemption from punishment; Responsibility – a) the composition of the crime; b) circumstances excluding the criminality of the act; c) complicity; d) exemption from criminal liability. Intermediary institutions provide a link between the categories of crime and punishment: a) the imposition of punishment (including unfinished crime, complicity, multiplicity of crimes, i.e. institutions that serve particular categories); b) subsystems of punishments provided for in articles of the Special Part of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation.

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