Economics of Punishment

Publication Type

Book Chapter

Publication Date

1-2007

Abstract

David Garland has argued that "punishment is a complex set of interlinked processes and institutions rather than a uniform object or event" (1990: 16). In the context of contemporary criminal justice, governmental officials activate these processes and institutions in response to crimes and victimization. Crime and punishment are costly social phenomena in human and material terms. In connecting punishment with crime as its logical consequence, one might reasonably assume that there would be some cost-benefit relationship. It is the context and causation of these economies that are complex.

Keywords

Criminal Law, Law and Society, Punishment, prisons

Discipline

Criminal Procedure | Public Economics | Social Control, Law, Crime, and Deviance

Publication

Encyclopaedia of Law and Society: American and Global Perspectives

Editor

D. S. Clark

First Page

129

Last Page

152

ISBN

9780761923879

Identifier

10.4135/9781412952637.n571

Publisher

Sage

Additional URL

http://doi.org/10.4135/9781412952637.n571

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