NCJ Number
125907
Date Published
1990
Length
221 pages
Annotation
This analysis of the political issues underlying discussions of crime, punishment, and penal reform emphasizes the recent debates regarding punishment and the penal system and concludes that critical criminology needs to develop reform proposals that are not only more concrete and empirical, but also more theoretical and utopian.
Abstract
The discussion provides a comparative and interdisciplinary analysis of penal policies, their underlying philosophies, and their effectiveness using empirical data from the Netherlands and other countries in Western Europe, North America, and Cuba. It also examines the reasons why some reformers urge stricter forms of punishment while others maintain that the concept of punishment is or should be incompatible with a just social order. The discussion reformulates the traditional way of viewing the relationship between crime and punishment and presents the concept of redress as a way of rethinking the pevious approaches. Chapter notes, index, and 359 references.