What does punishment communicate?

• In Event: Punishment and social context

Abstract

According to recent case law, the conception of criminal law as a means of communicative prevention confers on punishment the function of transmitting different messages to the different actors affected by the commission of a crime: "the convicted person, the victim and the community. The convicted person is told that the crime is an act for which he or she is responsible, that it is disapproved of and that the rule that was broken is restored. The victim is told that he or she has suffered unjust harm and that he or she has the right to be compensated for it. The community is informed that the rule is a valid and valid guideline for regulating social coexistence". Thus, a communicative process is outlined in which the sender: the judicial body that imposes the punishment, the message: the punishment itself and, in particular, the recipients of the punishment: the convict, the victim and the community. However, despite the role attributed to communication in the justification of punishment, it is striking how, in fact, this communicative process is completely ignored.Thus, the forms of reception described above are advanced, but the actual recipients of the punitive message are ignored in their determination and justification.This makes such forms of argumentation evident, as fallacies that expose as fact what is no more than a mere assumption, an assumption about the effective ways in which the addressee receives the message that also supposes punishment.In practice, these fallacious arguments lead to a discourse of application that is also fallacious and, consequently, illegitimate.In the face of this, this contribution will offer a first approach to the way in which the first of the three aforementioned addressees, the convicted person, understands the punishment that has been effectively imposed.

Author

• Fernando-Guanarteme Sánchez-Lázaro, La Laguna University