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by Herbert Packer

ISBN: 0804706565
Author: Herbert Packer
Publisher: Stanford University Press; Revised ed. edition (June 1, 1968)
Language: English
Pages: 388
ePub: 1775 kb
Fb2: 1335 kb
Rating: 4.3
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Category: Different
Subcategory: Law

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Herbert Leslie Packer (1925 – December 6, 1972) was an American law professor and criminologist.

Herbert Leslie Packer (1925 – December 6, 1972) was an American law professor and criminologist. His key work is the book The Limits of the Criminal Sanction (1968), which proposed two models of the criminal justice system, the crime control model and the due process model. These models were extremely influential in criminology and criminal policy debates.

The argument of this book begins with the proposition that there are certain things we must understand about the . First, we need to ask some questions about the rationale of the criminal sanction

Professor Herbert L. Packer rhetorically asks that question at the beginning of this excellent book, and then goes about the business of. .This is the person for whom The Limits of the Crhnnal Sanction ought to be required reading. A noted scholar has already called the book a classic.

He develops a view of the criminal justice prob-lem which leads him to counsel great caution in the use of the criminal sanction. Every man whose office permits him to exercise control over the criminal law must read it to properly perform his task. iardly less can be said of the voter who would intelligently exercise his franchise.

The argument of this book begins with the proposition that there are certain things we must understand about the criminal sanction before we can begin to talk sensibly about its limits.

Stanford university press, 1968

Stanford university press, 1968. The timeliness of the project, as its author points out, hardly needs emphasis.

The Limits of Criminal Law: A Comparative Analysis of Approaches to Legal Theorizing by Carl Constantin Lauterwein. Arlie Loughnan - 2014 - Criminal Law and Philosophy 8 (3):687-691. James Stribopoulos - 2012 - In François Tanguay-Renaud & James Stribopoulos (ed., Rethinking Criminal Law Theory: New Canadian Perspectives in the Philosophy of Domestic, Transnational, and International Criminal Law. Hart Publishing. The Limits of Criminal Culpability.

This essay argues that Packer's two-model conceptualization of the criminal process is best understood within his professional milieu of doctrinal legal scholarship and the political context of the Warren Court revolution.

In the 1960s, legal scholar Herbert L. Packer created models to describe exceeding expectations of the criminal justice system. The limits of the criminal sanction, by Herbert L. Packer (1968). These two models can be competing ideologies in criminal justice, but we will discuss how these models can be merged or balanced to work together. The first tension between these models is often the values they place as most important in the criminal justice system, the crime control model and the due process model.

Packer, Herbert (1968). The limits of the criminal sanction. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Pakes, Francis (2004). Rankin, Bruce, & Quane, James (2000). Neighborhood poverty and the social isolation of inner-city African-American families. Social Forces, 79, 139-170.

The argument of this book begins with the proposition that there are certain things we must understand about the criminal sanction before we can begin to talk sensibly about its limits. First, we need to ask some questions about the rationale of the criminal sanction. What are we trying to do by defining conduct as criminal and punishing people who commit crimes? To what extent are we justified in thinking that we can or ought to do what we are trying to do? Is it possible to construct an acceptable rationale for the criminal sanction enabling us to deal with the argument that it is itself an unethical use of social power? And if it is possible, what implications does that rationale have for the kind of conceptual creature that the criminal law is? Questions of this order make up Part I of the book, which is essentially an extended essay on the nature and justification of the criminal sanction.We also need to understand, so the argument continues, the characteristic processes through which the criminal sanction operates. What do the rules of the game tell us about what the state may and may not do to apprehend, charge, convict, and dispose of persons suspected of committing crimes? Here, too, there is great controversy between two groups who have quite different views, or models, of what the criminal process is all about. There are people who see the criminal process as essentially devoted to values of efficiency in the suppression of crime. There are others who see those values as subordinate to the protection of the individual in his confrontation with the state. A severe struggle over these conflicting values has been going on in the courts of this country for the last decade or more. How that struggle is to be resolved is a second major consideration that we need to take into account before tackling the question of the limits of the criminal sanction. These problems of process are examined in Part II.Part III deals directly with the central problem of defining criteria for limiting the reach of the criminal sanction. Given the constraints of rationale and process examined in Parts I and II, it argues that we have over-relied on the criminal sanction and that we had better start thinking in a systematic way about how to adjust our commitments to our capacities, both moral and operational.

Comments: (2)

Hirah

Not finished reading , but a very good book that every aspiring law student or non-law student should read. It's one of my best law books yet I have 8 more to read for law school hope they keep me awake as well as this one.

Makaitist

I wish Stanford Press would reprint this book so that I could own a copy of my own. As a death-sentence abolitionist, I was looking for a philosophical treatment of criminal sanction. I found it here in spades. Packer's prose is always penetrable, and the most abstruse philosophical issues made vivid through it. Categories are made concrete by examples, often from real cases. Packer's view is that neither the retributionist nor the utilitarian view (which includes rehabilitation)is by itself a sufficient basis upon which to found a theory of criminal justice. The one looks backward to past conduct, the other forward to predictions of future conduct. The one looks to the punishment aspect of the justice system, the other to its deterrent effect on potential wrongdoers. It is in the domain of excusable crime where Packer finds that neither model is by itself sufficient. If law enforcement and the prosecution allow perpetrators to escape prosecution, conviction, and punishment, the deterrent effect of justice is compromised. And the punitive aspect is abandoned when criminal conduct become a necessary but insufficient criterion for imposing penalties. The cost to society in the loss of utilitarian deterrence is made up for by a gain in freedom owing to less state intervention, especially when such intervention interferes with individual moral choices, and the imposition of punishment would serve no useful purpose since we assume these perpetrators are justified in their actions and need no restraint or reform. This is where Packer reveals his 60's liberalism. The ideal of maximizing individual freedom to make moral choices has become exhausted by the excesses of civil disobedience, hate crimes, police brutality, assassinations, scofflaw splinter societies, etc. This society now stands poised to abrupt the civil freedoms and rights guaranteed by its Constitution and trade them off for a greater sense of private security. Perhaps the time has come to re-examine the common-law notions of justifiable and excusable crime. For example, since it seems impossible to pass meaningful legislation controlling the purchase and possession of firearms, laws should be passed countermanding justifiable homicide when a firearm is used to commit this act. Self-defense would be no plea if a gun is used to kill your alleged assailant. Upon the successful prosecution of a few such cases, there would be no utility in owning a firearm for self-defense. And once people gave up their useless guns, they would not be so adamant about the right to possess them and conceal them from view. Then they might be willing to see the imposition of laws restricting ownership, for no other reason than to help disarm those they fear may be their assailants. Packer was wrong: the Benthamite view of crime and punishment is the right one, and it is sufficient. But Packer's keen arguments lead one to cogitate these matters.

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