The article contains a critical analysis of prison and probation reforms in Ukraine that have been implemented since 1991. The author emphasizes the main thesis that prison reform cannot be narrowed down to "improving the conditions of prisoners in prisons" and "improving the material conditions of prisons". Instead, prison and probation reform is a comprehensive improvement of the public administration of the prison and probation system and a rethinking of the mission of the prison system, where the emphasis should be on transparency, public policy analysis and proper evaluation of the criteria of public policy in the sphere of prisons and probation. The author emphasizes that the Ukrainian prison and probation system still does not have a clear program document developed according to established public policy criteria, and therefore the mission of the prison system is not properly identified. This situation, in turn, leads to a gap, firstly, between the aims of the judicial system and the aims of the prison system. Additionally, it leads to a gap between the declared and real aims of the prison system itself. Moreover, a large gap exists between the expectations of taxpayers who fund the prison and probation system and the actual social and criminological consequences of its activities. The article emphasizes that there are currently no indicators for assessing the effectiveness and efficiency of the Ukrainian prison system that have been developed systematically and dynamically. The evaluation of prison and probation policy through the recidivism rate is formally criticized, but no alternatives to this indicator are proposed. At the same time, the real recidivist rates after prison and probation supervision are in the "shadows". Therefore, we cannot evaluate the processes and results of prison and probation reforms by this indicator, which, even if declared occasionally, is clearly fragmented. The public administration of the prison system of Ukraine in its current form remains mostly a rather chaotic activity aimed at "streamlining the execution of criminal sentences", but has not yet become a sphere of "development and implementation of public policy in the field of execution of criminal sentences". Ukrainian penal science in its current form is characterized by its deep declarative nature, excessive formalism, attachment to outdated quasi-methods of scientific knowledge, detachment from the practical needs of the penitentiary system, and sometimes simply from reality. The alternation of "approaches," "methods," and scholastic evaluations of Soviet (both in time