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Book review: Money and the Governance of Punishment: A Genealogy of the Penal Fine

Document Cited in Related
Vincent
AuthorEster Blay Gil
Date01 December 2019
Published date01 December 2019
DOI10.1177/0264550519881914a
Subject MatterBook reviews
PRB881914 468..473
470
Probation Journal 66(4)
Money and the Governance of Punishment: A Genealogy of
the Penal Fine
Patricia Faraldo Cabana
Routledge; 2017, pp. 244; £36.99; pbk
ISBN: 9780367227081
Reviewed by: Ester Blay Gil, University of Girona, Spain
This book constitutes a most welcome monograph on the penal fine in the context of
Europe. In its preface, Patricia Faraldo states her aim to convey to the anglophone
reader the extensive literature on fines in languages other than English centring on
the legal development of this sanction and the crime policy and academic debates
surrounding it. To do so, the author draws on a considerable range of texts in
German, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, and French, as well as English. Besides
facilitating anglophone audiences access to the ‘continental’ discussions around the
fine, the book contributes to the construction of a European perspective on this
sanction. This monograph revisits, systematises, and contextualises the problem of
the fine and its legal development, as well as its use in various European jurisdic-
tions, integrating legal debates, historical development, and judicial application,
with statistical data where available.
The book is divided into seven chapters which address the changing meanings of
time, money, and liberty as essential elements for an understanding of the fine as a
penal punishment. The fine (and not the prison, as is sometimes claimed) is revealed
as the ideal Enlightenment punishment through a careful reading of the works of
Beccaria and Bentham. And the specific problems posed by fines are explored:
their payment by third parties and the tensions involved in the extension of the
principle of the individual nature of penalties to a sanction involving the payment of
a sum of money, and the fundamental question of the fine’s adjustment in relation to
the unequal distribution of wealth in society.
Using comparative and single jurisdiction examples, the text addresses various
issues that call the success of the day fine...

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