Show Summary Details

Page of

PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2018. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice).

date: 22 January 2021

Abstract and Keywords

This article considers the point of systems of criminal justice; reviews Émile Durkheim's theory and its application to contemporary societies; reviews the evidence concerning the ways in which the criminal law can shape behavior other than by threat or imposition of punishment; examines the evidence for why people obey the law and the significance of the state's claim to legitimacy; and discusses the explosion of punishment in the United States and the United Kingdom, and analyses this as an expressive, Durkheimian attempt to shore up both the state's claim to legitimate sovereignty and the moral order of society. The article is informed by the thought that the most important effects of criminal justice do not result only from its involving the threat and imposition of punishment. These effects are intimately tied to the idea of legitimacy; and in evaluating them we cannot but help ask normative questions about the proper relation of the state to its citizens.

Keywords: criminal justice, Émile Durkheim, criminal law, punishment, moral order

Matt Matravers

Matt Matravers is professor of political philosophy and Director of the School of Politics, Economics and Philosophy at the University of York.

Access to the complete content on Oxford Handbooks Online requires a subscription or purchase. Public users are able to search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter without a subscription.

Please subscribe or login to access full text content.

If you have purchased a print title that contains an access token, please see the token for information about how to register your code.

For questions on access or troubleshooting, please check our FAQs, and if you can''t find the answer there, please contact us.