State Punishment

A lawyer by training, Nicola Lacey presents a new approach to the questions of the moral justification of punishment by the State.

She focuses on the theory of punishment in the context of other political questions, such as the function and scope of the criminal law.

Lacey criticises the fundamental liberal philosophical assumptions underlying much of the modern tradition of theorising about punishment, and argues instead for a conception of the justifying social functions of punishment proceeding from a different set of assumptions and a different background political philosophy. Cogently and lucidly argued, the book will be of interest to philosophers, social theorists and lawyers alike.