Contemporary Punishment: Views, Explanations, And Justifications

Edited by Rudolph J. Gerber and Patrick D. McAnany, editors. Foreword by Norval Morris

From the cover: Contemporary Punishment provides a comprehensive and thoughtful overview of the criminal justice system. The authors present the various arguments for the justification of punishment and in the concluding section attempt to reconcile the discrepancies among the competing views. When the question is asked why society punishes criminals, the answer touches the foundations of our political, social and moral life. We have spent centuries dis­cussing how the coercive power of society will be applied to those who break the rules. As Max Weber has said; "It is a fact that most 'fundamental' questions are often left unregulated by law even in legal orders which are otherwise thor­oughly rationalized." This implies that each generation must wrestle with the problem and fashion an answer which satisfies its sense of justice.

London. University of Notre Dame Press. 1972. 263p.