CRIME, PUNISHMENT AND RESPONSIBILITY: THE JURISPRUDENCE OF ANTONY DUFF. Ed by Rowan Cruft, Matthew H Kramer and Mark R Reiff Oxford: Oxford University Press (www.oup.com), 2011. ix + 394 pp. ISBN 9780199592814. £60.
| DOI | 10.3366/elr.2012.0113 |
| Author | Findlay Stark |
| Published date | 01 May 2012 |
| Date | 01 May 2012 |
| Pages | 293-294 |
Antony Duff is one of the world's leading criminal law theorists. His works – spanning philosophy, criminal law, and criminal justice more generally – have elucidated many complex areas and stimulated much constructive debate. This well-presented collection of seventeen essays on his work both develops existing arguments and explores fresh avenues for future discussion. It should interest all of those with an interest in the theory and doctrine of the criminal law, and in criminal justice more generally.
The book is split into six sections. First, there is the editors’ brief, yet very helpful, introduction to Duff's work. This is useful because some of Duff's earlier work is not very accessible to the novice reader. Cruft, Kramer and Reiff's overviews of all of Duff's contributions to the philosophy of criminal law and punishment are, however, extremely clear. This means that newcomers to Duff's work should not be put off from picking up this book. If anything, they should be positively encouraged to do so, as this could be a starting point to inspiring greater engagement with the original materials.
Further assistance for those who are less familiar with Duff's work (or are in need of a refresher) is given by the fact that virtually all of the contributors’ chapters begin by outlining clearly Duff's thinking on a certain issue. In the second part of the book, the contributions concentrate on Duff's theory of punishment as communication. In essence, Duff's argument is that the criminal process ought to be a communicative endeavour, in which the victim, offender and the wider community are engaged in a dialogue about the alleged act of wrongdoing. Punishment is a means of communicating, to the victim, offender and public, that the offender's conduct is socially disavowed. This is done in the hope that the offender will repent (in Duff's “secular” sense of that term) and that the wider community's understanding of social expectations concerning conduct and reasoning will be reinforced.
The chapters that deal with this aspect of Duff's work concentrate on issues which Duff has not looked at in great detail in his past publications. They therefore seek to test the limits of punishment as communication, rather than rehearse old arguments. This gives them a sense of freshness. A particularly interesting contribution is Brownlee's exploration of the offender's part in the dialogic criminal process which Duff envisages. Brownlee explores the realities of such an...
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