This paper raises two main questions. The first concerns the current idea that punishment – conceived as the loss of liberty – has an effect in preventing unlawful behaviour. It can in fact be shown that, in general, sanctions have a poor individual preventive effect. As to general prevention, punishment may be expected to have a deterrent effect when the unlawful behaviour is the result of a rational decision, that is, a decision based on a cost–benefit analysis. However, a wide variety of factors, from group support to situational and systemic factors, may very well counteract the threatening effect of the sanction. The second question concerns the feasibility of non-stigmatizing ways to cope with crime. The few examples borrowed from legal anthropology seem to indicate that viable alternatives exist. But the transfer of a non-Western, indigenous problem-solving process to culturally different contexts is problematic and should be carried out with extreme caution.