Summary
Why should offenders be punished - what should punishments be designed to achieve? Why has imprisonment become the normal punishment for crime in modern industrial societies? What is the relationship between theories of punishment and the actual penalties inflicted on offenders? This introductory text provides a comprehensive account of the ideas and controversies that have arisen within law, philosophy, sociology and criminology about the punishment of criminals. It summarises major philosophical ideas - retribution, rehabilitation, incapacitation - and discusses their strengths and weaknesses. Topics covered include: recent cultural studies of punishment; the phenomenon of mass imprisonment that has emerged in the United States; restorative justice; the sociological perspectives of Durkheim, the Marxists, Foucault and their contemporary followers; the influence of theory on penal policy, and at the impact of penal ideologies on those on whom punishment is inflicted.
Contents
1. Perspectives on punishment. -- 2. Utilitarian approaches. -- 3. Retribution. -- 4. Hybrids, compromises and syntheses. -- 5. Restorative justice: diversion, compromise or replacement discourse. -- 6. Punishment and progress: the Durkheimian tradition. -- 7. The political economy of punishment: Marxist approaches. -- 8. The disciplined society: Foucault and the analysis of penality. -- 9. Understanding contemporary penality. -- 10. The struggle for justice: critical criminology and critical legal studies. -- Postscript: Beyond modernity: the fate of justice.