Introduction: the article deals with the provisions of part 3 of Article 60 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, mandatory for the court in sentencing. The proposals on improvement of legislation and law enforcement practice are formulated. The purpose of the study is to identify the importance of the opinion of the victim and his role in sentencing. Materials and Methods: when working on the article generalization of the rules of judicial practice, as well as analyzed statistical data on cases of reduction of punishments by courts of higher institutions were. Results: the Criminal Law does not contain provisions that require the court to take into account the opinion of the parties on the punishment. The law enforcement agencies are expanding the list of General principles of sentencing, adding to them the opinion of the victim of the punishment, which is why there is a contradictory jurisprudence. Higher courts exclude from the sentences a reference to the victim's opinion on the imposition of a severe penalty, and as a consequence, reduce the penalty. It is caused, first of all, by the fact that this circumstance is interpreted by higher courts as unreasonably recognized aggravating punishment circumstance which isn't provided by Art. 63 of the Criminal Code. If the position of the offender is caused by a desire to mitigate the punishment, such a reference in the sentence is retained in its revision. Discussion and Conclusions: one of the ways to overcome the contradictory judicial approach to accounting for the opinion of the victim is its inclusion in part 3 of Article 60 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation as one of the general principles of sentencing.