Legitime Gewalt? Anmerkungen zur aktuellen Strafkritik

All punishment is a product of social knowledge and action. As a practically effective theory, it has a history, an ethics, and a horizon of experience; as a social phenomenon, it is defended and fought against. Punishment is part of a project of freedom and yet irritates the self-description of free societies. Current critiques of punishment address this irritation by questioning the legitimacy of this practice in very different ways. At the center is the argument that law and the state downplay their responsibility for social conflict, that punishment and pain create new suffering rather than solving problems. It remains to be discussed, however, whether the alternatives offered can deliver on the promise of participatory and caring solutions to conflict, or at any rate of responsibility without suffering and pain.
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