Penal Theory and Penal Practice: The Implications of the Philosophy of Punishment for Criminal Justice Practice

This review surveys the main positions in contemporary debates about the justification of punishment and their implications for criminal justice practice. The first two sections explain the philosophy of punishment. Philosophy involves normative theorizing and rational reconstruction. Punishment is understood as criminal punishment: an institutional state practice imposing intentionally burdensome measures on those proved to have committed what the law defines as crimes. The third section sketches types of prospectivist and retrospectivist theory; the ways in which prospectivist and retrospectivist considerations can be combined; and the implications such theories have for criminal justice practice. The fourth section discusses a communicative theory and its implications for the ways in which offenders are addressed and for appropriate modes of punishment. The fifth section briefly explores some further implications concerning the political context of punishment. The final section discusses the interdependence between philosophy of criminal law and other disciplines such as criminology and history.