Theories of Punishment

Abstract

Legal punishment typically involves the deliberate infliction of pain, harm, or loss on an individual by the state or community in the form of a judicial response to the violation of a legal norm. Legal punishment is what gives the criminal law its coercive force and distinguishes, in modern legal systems, criminal law norms from the norms of contract, property, and the like. In different legal systems punishment may take different forms: loss of life, liberty, or property; deprivations of civic rights or social status; banishment; dishonor; torture, branding, or mutilation; outlawry/prescription; or the infliction of such penalties on family or relatives of the convicted person. All of these forms of punishment are found in some manner in Athenian law, though not all of them could be inflicted on citizens, as opposed to foreigners or slaves. As Demosthenes puts it in Against Androtion (22.55-56), what distinguishes the slave from the free man is that the latter is sacrosanct in his person/body, which is respected even when he is convicted of wrongdoing. The slave, on the other hand pays the penalty with his body. Indeed, punishment in most premodern legal systems was linked to civic and social status. It is beyond the scope of this chapter to address the practices and modalities of punishment at Athens, though there is much room for further research in this area.