ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the purposes and justifications of punishment. The Criminal Justice Act 1991 accordingly prescribed punishment in proportion to the crime as the main rationale for sentencing. Probation, after all, is essentially involved in giving effect to the court's decisions, and the concepts explored will be of relevance to probation staff in almost all aspects of their work. The practices and institutions of punishment have many purposes and meanings. Retributivism holds that punishment is a fitting response to wrongdoing: offenders should be dealt with as they deserve, and a proper punishment is one that matches the offence. The most persuasive reductive versions thus incorporate a principle of parsimony: to impose as light a punishment as is consistent with achieving reductive objectives. Disagreements about the place of deterrence in sentencing really hinge on the extent to which increases in the levels of punishment offer a plausible means of reducing crime.
