ABSTRACT
Since the dawn of civilization, the institution of punishment has existed in every society. Over the centuries, philosophers and legal scholars have struggled to clarify the relationship between punishment and justice and attempted to justify the practice on both moral and rational grounds. e broad purposes of the criminal law are to prevent certain undesirable conduct and thereby protect the interests of society; it is framed in terms of imposing punishment for undesirable conduct (Bedau and Kelly 2010). When punishment is imposed by English-speaking courts, it is referred to as sentencing. In criminal cases, the state is the complaining party, “the initiating and enforcing agent” (Murphy and Coleman 1990), in contrast to cases in private or civil law, in which individuals seek redress for harm. In criminal cases, the state views itself as the injured party and, in order to protect the public interest, may choose to prosecute crimes even in cases where the victim prefers not to press charges. A discussion of why certain classes of acts are criminalized in order to prevent seriously harmful conduct, whereas other acts, perhaps equally harmful, are regarded as the province of civil law (e.g., tort actions providing for the award of monetary damages), is beyond the scope of this chapter and has been analyzed elsewhere (Simons 2008).
