Transgressing crime and punishment: abolition and deconstruction
Whatever their disagreements on the most important goals of punishment, the real or rhetorical functions of punishment for the state, the nature of punishment, the most effective and efficient ways to punish, the strategies needed to reduce class, gender or race oppression in punishment, all the approaches to punishment mentioned so far assume that Western societies will - and should - continue to have criminal laws and penal codes. They assume, in other words, the continued existence of state punishment as the normal response to crime.