The article is devoted to the consideration of essence and tendencies of reforming the criminal-executive legislation of Ukraine concerning the procedure and execution and serving life imprisonment conditions. Certain debatable provisions, both theoretical and legal, concerning procedure and conditions of life service executing punishment are considered. It is proved that clarity, completeness and system-legal balance will be facilitated by the formal reproduction in the law of classification of all criminal-executive norms of Chapter 22 of the Criminal Executive Code (hereinafter–CEC) (based on a certain criterion) into norms of general and special significance, which in turn should be divided into the following subtypes. General penitentiary provisions, which determine the initial legal status of persons sentenced to life imprisonment, provide a list and features of the rights, legitimate interests, responsibilities of convicts, ways (mechanism) to comply with safe conditions of detention, etc. General penitentiary provisions, which define the basic principles for implementation of changes in detention conditions during execution and serving a sentence (essence, tasks, forms, general requirements for material grounds for application, procedural issues of progressive system implementation, definition of disciplinary system).