ABSTRACT
Punishment has been said to be over-determined, with an abundance of justifications and purposes (Nietzsche 1887/1998), many of which were considered in the last chapter. Yet both the amount and the type of punishment are underdetermined, with none of several rationales pointing to a clear way in which the ‘weight’ of punishment is to be decided or how it is to be carried out. In the first part of this chapter, we consider trends in sentencing practice and in penal policy, which often reflect different views about what punishment might and should be, and what these developments have meant for probation. Discussion then turns to probation’s contribution to sentencing through the pre-sentence reports which probation officers prepare for court.
