NCJ Number
126709
Date Published
1988
Length
11 pages
Annotation
The Swedish penal system contains four main sanctions (imprisonment, fines, conditional sentences, and probation), and the key to a coherent penal system is appropriate and effective punishment.
Abstract
The author argues that it is important to use punishment as an expression of the degree of reprehensibleness of a crime. Legal punishment involves suffering or loss imposed in a detached manner on behalf of the State upon individuals who have committed unlawful acts. A penalty is administered when someone has committed a crime, but what constitutes a crime depends on what a country criminalizes. The role of general prevention within the penal system comes into play on the level of criminalization. The very point of threatening with punishment is lost if one does not presuppose that the threat has some preventive effect. The relation between crime and punishment is conceptual, with the penal system designed to make adjudication entail retribution. If a coherent penal system is desired, considerations of special versus general prevention are not relevant when courts determine punishment. Offense seriousness should be the decisive factor, but indeterminate deprivation of liberty should not be used as a penal sanction. Although the penal system is indeed antiquated and overburdened, its strength lies in its basic moral demands as a means of social control. 2 tables