NCJ Number
181094
Journal
Punishment & Society Volume: 1 Issue: 1 Dated: July 1999 Pages: 27-43
Date Published
1999
Length
17 pages
Annotation
This article describes a political community structured by the liberal values of autonomy, individual freedom and privacy, a community in which the criminal law will have an important but limited role in defining a range of “public” wrongs and providing for a formal response to such wrongs.
Abstract
The article questions whether criminal punishment can be consistent with community—-whether it can treat those who are punished as full members of the political community. The article argues that a deterrent system of punishment is not fully consistent with the values of a society in which criminal law has a limited role in defining public wrongs and providing formal responses to such wrongs. A communicative system of penitential punishment, which aims to persuade wrongdoers to repent and to reform, is consistent with those values and can be defended against the liberal charge that it violates offenders’ autonomy and privacy. Notes, references