Abstract: The author studies the meaning of violence as a criminal phenomenon, characterizes the concept of violence in the context of its criminal attributes. The author analyzes such attributes of violence as coercion, premeditation, and activity of the deed. The author emphasizes that violence can be of physical, psychic and sexual character. From the viewpoint of the subject, violence can be used against another person, a group of people, the society, and an animal. The study provides the analysis of other attributes of violence. The author offers his own definition of violence as a criminal category. The author uses the following methodological bases: the complex of the general scientific and special methods of cognition of socio-legal reality. The methodology is based on the dialectical method with its features of objectivity, universality, historicism, and certainty of the truth. Among the general scientific methods the author uses the methods of analysis, synthesis, comparison, measurement. As a special method the author uses the method of comparative-legal analysis. The novelty of the research lies in the attempt to reveal the essence of violence as a criminal category, the absence of which impedes law enforcement and doesn’t favour the uniformity of practice. The author offers the following definition of violence: a socially dangerous premeditated active physical, psychic or sexual act used against another person, a group of people, the society or an animal, characterized by the moral, physical or material harm and prohibited by the Criminal Code under the threat of punishment.