ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the question of how the fine fits into the contemporary penal system. There is a large, empirical and theoretical knowledge about the prison and there have emerged a number of interlinked and very sophisticated vocabularies in which to talk about it, how it works, what its effects are and the role the prison plays in the penal system and in the wider society. Within the social sciences, the most prominent of these vocabularies is probably that which places study of prison in the wider context of a concern with power. The exemplar case in the literature on punishment is undoubtedly the prison and the types of social relationships upon which it is based and to which it gives rise. Fines may thus be conceived of as ‘resource based’ punishments and imprisonment as a ‘bodily punishment’.
