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Penal Theories and Practices: A Review of Walker's Punishment, Danger and Stigma: The Morality of Criminal Justice and Christie's Limits to Pain
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 November 2018
Abstract
- Type
- Review Essay
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- Copyright © American Bar Foundation, 1983
References
1 Nigel Walker, Punishment, Danger and Stigma: The Morality of Criminal Justice vii (Oxford: Basil Blackwell; Totowa, N.J.: Barnes & Noble Books, 1980).Google Scholar
2 Nils Christie, Limits to Pain 13–18 (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1981; Oxford: Martin Robertson & Co., 1982).Google Scholar
3 Walker, supra note 1, at viii.Google Scholar
4 Id. at 23.Google Scholar
5 Id. at 35, 55, 67, 90.Google Scholar
6 Christie, supra note 2, at 35.Google Scholar
7 Id. at 10–11.Google Scholar
8 Walker, supra note 1, at 117.Google Scholar
9 Christie, supra note 2, at 39, 45.Google Scholar
10 Thomas Nagel, Mortal Questions ix (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979).Google Scholar
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13 Id. at 112–13, 109.Google Scholar
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16 Hart, Herbert L. A., Murder and the Principles of Punishment: England and the United States, 52 Nw. U.L. Rev., 433, 447 (1957).Google Scholar
17 Christie, supra note 2, at 25, 28. Christie, unlike Walker (see below), does not deal separately with incapacitation or prevention as a justification for punishment, merely referring to it briefly in his chapter “Treatment of Crime” and noting that “study after study” has “documented” the vague usage of the concept of dangerousness, difficulties in regard to prediction, and “the usual lack of treatment success.”Id. at 25–26.Google Scholar
18 Id. at 29, 31, 33.Google Scholar
19 Id. at 52, 45, 28, 46–47.Google Scholar
20 Id. at 36.Google Scholar
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32 Id. at 18–19.Google Scholar
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36 2 James Fitzjames Stephen, A History of the Criminal Law of England 107 (London: Macmillan, 1883; New York: Burt Franklin, n.d.).Google Scholar
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51 Id. at 65–87, esp. 76–80, 79. A curious thing may be noted here. In making the point that although “[it] is usual to distinguish ‘general’ from ‘individual’ (or ‘special’) deterrence,” they are essentially “attempts to do the same thing,” Walker adds that the difference between them “is surely exaggerated by Zimring and Hawkins.”Id. at 68 & n.5. This is curious because precisely the point that there is no significant difference was first made in Franklin E. Zimring & Gordon J. Hawkins, Deterrence: The Legal Threat in Crime Control 72–74 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973).Google Scholar
52 Walker, supra note 1, at 26–27, 190.Google Scholar
53 Id. at 24. He mentions this in connection with the committee whose work was reported in Andrew Von Hirsch, Doing Justice: The Choice of Punishments: Report of the Committee for the Study of Incarceration (New York: Hill & Wang, 1976).Google Scholar
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58 Id. at 88–113.Google Scholar
59 Id. at 23. The book also contains chapters dealing with four topics relevant to the main subject but not discussed in this review. The topics are: the justification of the inclusion of a type of conduct in the criminal law; the justifications for reducing or increasing sentences in the light of mitigating or aggravating circumstances; the stigmatic effects of being found guilty and sentenced by a criminal court; and prisoners' rights.Google Scholar
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63 Nigel Walker, Behaviour and Misbehaviour: Explanations and Non-explanations (Oxford: Basil Blackwell & Mott, 1977).Google Scholar
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69 The description of those beliefs given here is based largely on many years of intimate acquaintance and discussion with ordinary citizens. I am encouraged in this by the fact that in nominating “the feature of sentencing policy which offenders themselves most resent,” Walker says, “I base this on regular discussions over more than ten years with mixed classes of prisoners and university students.” Walker, supra note 1, at 127 &n. 14.Google Scholar
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74 See essays by Mabbott, Armstrong, Baier, and Mundle, in H. B. Acton, ed., The Philosophy of Punishment (London: Macmillan, 1969), and by Feinberg, infra note 80.Google Scholar
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87 C. W. K. Mundle, Postcript (1968), appended to id., Punishment and Desert, in Acton, supra note 76, at 65, 81. Thomas Nagel, incidentally, writes of retribution as one of those “primitive moral sentiments” with which such considerations as decency, humanity, and compassion “have to compete.” Nagel, supra note 10, at xii-xiii.Google Scholar