The article highlights major tasks of the national criminal law science in the context of current reforms of Ukrainian criminal legislation. According to the Decree of the President of Ukraine “Issues of the Legal Reform Commission”, a working group for criminal law development has been formed as part of the said Commission; this group is assigned the task of updating criminal legislation of Ukraine. In connection with this task, the group is working on three codes which concern liability for public offenses, namely: the Criminal Code of Ukraine, the Code of Misdemeanors and the Code of Ukraine on Administrative Offenses. Scientific support of legislative work is essential to ensure the implementation of this task.

This article aims at formulating the tasks of the national criminal law science with a view to ensuring that these Codes are prepared with high quality.

The main results of the study are the formulation and justification of 17 areas of scientific research intended to provide high-quality scientific support for drafting of the new Codes. They include: ensuring of criminological, social and international legal compliance of the new criminal legislation of Ukraine, i.e., compliance with current crime challenges; research into the issues of criminal legislation compliance with requirements of the Constitution of Ukraine; ensuring that the content of criminal law provisions complies with the needs of a democratic society; via scientific research, justification of changes to the future Criminal Code of Ukraine with a view to abandoning the provisions which no longer meet today’s requirements; creating the concept of liability for public offenses and its implementation in the texts of laws; research of corruption risks arising when criminal law is established and applied; research on the protection of interests of a crime victim; introduction of wide application of punishments (penalties) which do not involve imprisonment, namely, alternative measures and, above all, the institute of probation.

The author concludes that focusing the scholars’ efforts on the said areas of scientific research will allow preparing the future legislation on liability for public offenses in the manner meeting the challenges of modern times.