PUNISHMENT

Punishment Theory and Practice
Mark Tunick
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS
Berkeley · Los Angeles · Oxford
© 1992 The Regents of the University of California









Currently there is a debate about whether we should allow our prisons to be owned and operated privately. One opponent of private prisons argues, "What are the core purposes of government? Foreign affairs and domestic defense. I count corrections and detention as among the latter, and I don't think our government should contract out its core reason for being." But an internal auditor for Texas's Department of Corrections isn't persuaded: "I'm an old state bureaucrat…. I don't have any philosophies. If they can do it cheaper than the state can, more power to them" (New York Times , March 27, 1990). To the hard-nosed Texas auditor concerned with what works most efficiently, the theorist who appeals to a philosophy of what's morally right is too taken with abstractions and high-sounding principles to confront the tough choices and uncomfortable truths of the real world. The tension in this confrontation is well known, perhaps inevitable, but nevertheless disturbing; it is the tension between the theorist who stands on the "outside" talking of ideals and principles, and the practitioner who is "inside" and needs to get things done. This is a book of theory about one of the most troubling of our social practices, legal punishment.


This book is a work of theory because it holds up ideals to the reality of our criminal justice system; but it is a work of theory also because it considers whether we should have the practice of legal punishment at all, an issue not often raised by practitioners such as judges, defense attorneys, and prosecutors, whose preoccupations inside the practice afford them little opportunity to step back and reflect on such a heady question. Addressing the question "Why punish at all?" is not a mere philosophical and intellectually edifying exercise. The answer matters practically. For if we have a compelling interpretation of why we punish, of the purpose of the practice, then from this account we might derive principles and standards that determine how we resolve the problems engaging those practitioners.

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