ABSTRACT
That the expression of the community’s condemnation is an essential ingredient in legal punishment is widely acknowledged by legal writers. The reprobative symbolism of punishment is subject to attack not only as an independent source of suffering but as the vehicle of undeserved responsive attitudes and unfair judgments of blame. The relation of the expressive function of punishment to its various central purposes is not always easy to trace. The symbolic function of punishment also explains why even those sophisticated persons who abjure resentment of criminals and look with small favor generally on the penal law are likely to demand that certain kinds of conduct be punished when or if the law lets them go by. Public condemnation, whether avowed through the stigmatizing symbolism of punishment or unavowed but clearly discernible, can greatly magnify the suffering caused by its attendant mode of hard treatment.
