ABSTRACT
It seems appropriate to offer a brief overview of some recent and contemporary developments in normative penal theory in the continuing, some might say never-ending, debate about how we can justify the practice of criminal punishment, and about what ends that practice, if it can be justified, should serve. In the first section I briefly sketch some of the central themes in normative penal theory during the last four decades. I then provide a slightly more detailed account of a communicative theory of punishment, since this focus on punishment’s communicative dimension seems to me to offer the best prospect of understanding how a system of criminal punishment could be justified. Finally, I indicate some of the significant implications of such an account: implications for sentencing theory and practice, and for what we can call the preconditions of just punishment.
