ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the relationships between inequality, crime and punishment and outlines four different models of sentencing and assess those models according to their capacity to develop effective measures of penal intervention without increasing inequality and its effects. The fundamental implication will be that, until there is a greater recognition of the relationships between crime, criminal justice and social justice, it is unlikely that sentences will be fashioned which will bring about reductions in lawbreaking. At the most general level the argument will be that the state's right to punish is based on a contractual obligation to attempt to rectify the particular 'social problems which both occasion, and are occasioned by, lawbreaking' and that forms of punishment which ignore that obligation, while they might fulfil other functions, will not reduce crime. When individual sentences are being considered, however, the notion that rehabilitation is only for poorer offenders should be abandoned.
