In this article, the author examines the grounds and principles of criminalization of encroachments against the personal freedom of a person and a citizen. The purpose of this study is to analyze the legal validity of criminalization of acts that infringe on personal freedom. The article emphasizes that the criminalization of socially dangerous acts taking place in society plays a leading role among the means of influencing crime. In the practice of developing criminal legislation, there are many examples when previously unpunished criminal acts were later recognized as a crime at the legislative level. The methodological basis of the research is based on traditional general scientific and special legal methods: system-structural, historical-legal and comparative-legal. The researcher notes that the need to criminalize crimes against personal freedom is primarily due to the following reasons: a high degree of public danger; negative dynamics of these acts; the existence of conditions for committing these crimes that cannot be eliminated without criminal liability; the need for a criminal law guarantee of protection of constitutional rights and legislative provisions; the existence of international legal obligations of the state to counteract the acts in question. Subsequently, the article makes a reasonable conclusion that in the Republic of Kazakhstan, in fact, there were and is currently objective grounds that prompted the legislator to criminalize attacks on personal freedom. The author refers to the principles of criminalization of acts against personal freedom: legal and criminological (the possibility of influencing socially dangerous acts through criminal law measures; the procedural feasibility of prosecution; the principle of proportionality of sanctions and economy of repression); socio-economic (the significant nature of the material and moral harm caused by the crime; the advantage of positive consequences over negative ones; the availability of material resources for the implementation of the criminal law ban; ); socio-psychological (sufficient level of public legal awareness and psychology; historical traditions). In the article, the author concludes that the Kazakh legislator really had every reason to criminalize acts against personal freedom. At the same time, it is emphasized that despite the relative regularity of criminal law acts that infringe on personal freedom, the legal regulation of criminal liability for them still requires further improvement.