ABSTRACT
Crime and punishment grip the public imagination. The media regularly bombards us with the latest news on crime statistics while our airwaves are saturated by pundits debating how crimes should be punished. Moreover, crime and punishment affects us. Today, approximately seven million Americans are either in prison or on probation or parole.1 Nearly 60 million Americans have a criminal record. This is almost 30 per cent of the US adult population.2 The associated costs have increased 660 per cent from $9 billion in 1982 to $69 billion in 2006.3 It is, then, easy to understand the increasing importance of crime and punishment to citizens and politicians alike. Some have even suggested that ‘the penal system is in a state of crisis’.4
