Economics of Punishment

• Main Author: FINDLAY, Mark
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2007
• Subjects: Criminal Law; Law and Society; Punishment; prisons; Criminal Procedure; Public Economics; Social Control, Law, Crime, and Deviance
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/sol_research/2093; https://search.library.smu.edu.sg/discovery/fulldisplay?docid=alma99318361702601&context=L&vid=65SMU_INST:SMU_NUI&lang=en&search_scope=INK&adaptor=Local%20Search%20Engine&tab=INK&query=any,contains,Encyclopaedia%20of%20Law%20and%20Society:%20American%20and%20Global%20Perspectives&offset=0
• Institution: Singapore Management University

David Garland has argued that "punishment is a complex set of interlinked processes and institutions rather than a uniform object or event" (1990: 16). In the context of contemporary criminal justice, governmental officials activate these processes and institutions in response to crimes and victimization. Crime and punishment are costly social phenomena in human and material terms. In connecting punishment with crime as its logical consequence, one might reasonably assume that there would be some cost-benefit relationship. It is the context and causation of these economies that are complex.