ABSTRACT
The catalogue of punishments inflicted on human beings, usually by men, is a long and shameful one. They are often far more barbarically inventive than anything perpetrated by the malefactors themselves, for example, outlawry, transportation, branding, mutilation by cutting off the tongue or hands, the scold’s bridle, burning, boiling in oil, flogging and death. All these have been abolished in the civilised world (some not until the mid-twentieth century), but solitary confinement is still widely practised. It is often hard to see where lies the borderline, if there is one, between legally permitted punishments and torture. Reviewing the killing, torture, separation of families and general misery inflicted in the name of law enforcement, the Dutch criminologist, Louk Hulsman, in a speech to the Howard League for Penal Reform in 1976, said that the three greatest causes of human misery throughout the ages have been famine and pestilence, war and the criminal justice system. Restorative justice is an attempt to find a better way.
