Or, consider the persistent tendency - my own included - to
condemn a crime-control policy or programme simply by labelling
it 'coercive' or 'punitive' and, hence, we are invited to conclude,
a failure, unjust or inhumane. This is a peculiar stance, indeed,
for intellectuals who subscribe to socialist or some other set
of collective values. Only in the crudest forms of libertarianism
and in the most romantic strains of labelling theory does it make
sense to defend the exclusive rights of the individual against any
form of imposition by the collective. In no other political philosophy
or social theory can this be the way to resolve the relationship
between the individual and society. It continually grieves me
to see questions of punishment and individual moral responsibility
posed in this way, particularly when it is implied that these are
mere bourgeois issues which will quite obviously be resolved in the
new social order.