ABSTRACT
Crime and punishment grip the public imagination. The media regularly bombards people with the latest news on crime statistics while our airwaves are saturated by pundits debating how crimes should be punished. Danielle was not punished simply because someone else disagreed with her. Instead, she was punished because of a particular act that she performed. This particular act is her committing a crime. The justification of punishment may rest upon the justification of law. Punishments are understood as ‘hard treatment’, or ‘imprisonment’. The difference between penalties and punishments is not simply in severity but in character. The objection is that it is always unjustified to punish those who have not broken the law. An innocent person cannot be said to deserve punishment on any definition. Punishment demands not only that it must be for breaking the law and of a person for breaking the law. Legal moralists link the criminalization of certain acts with their immorality.
