On Crime and Punishment

On Crime and Punishment

Winston Churchill once said that the public attitude toward criminals constitutes “a sure test of the level of civilization.” 1 If so, then these essentials of the liberal doctrine as set forth by Leon Radzinowicz should not be forgotten:

Since law, and especially criminal law, placed restrictions upon individual freedom, there should be as little of it as possible. To prohibit an action unnecessarily increases rather than decreases crime. Moreover, it was not the function of the law to enforce moral virtue as such, but simply to serve the needs of a particular society…

As to the administration of justice: It was here above all that the rights of the individual had suffered most in the past and here that it was most necessary to build secure lines of defense against the encroachments of the State…. Presumption of innocence should be the guiding principle: the maxim, so fashionable at the beginning of the nineteenth century, that it...