NCJ Number
177543
Editor(s)
R M Andrews
Date Published
1997
Length
200 pages
Annotation
This volume presents 10 interdisciplinary and cross-cultural studies focusing on theoretical and practical issues related to punishment in past and contemporary societies.
Abstract
The authors include jurists, philosophers, historians, a literary scholar, and a psychoanalyst. The first three papers examine the doctrines and purposes of punishment as they developed historically within three cultural traditions: classical China, medieval Islam, and Christian Europe of the Middle Ages and the early modern era. The next three papers focus on punishment practices, including the ideology, law, and enactment of capital punishment in Old Regime France; legal and interpersonal punishment in Victorian England as represented in the writings of Charles Dickens; and the dynamics of punishment in the formation of modern personality, according to clinical psychoanalysis. The final four studies present contrasting perspectives on contemporary punishment policies of the governments of the United States and Great Britain. These four papers focus on the moral, constitutional, and conventional justifications for punishment; the role of the victim in punishment decisions; retribution as reflected in the policy of just deserts; and a communitarian approach to punishment. Footnotes, information about the authors, and index