It looks at the ways that the identification of what constitutes a crime has changed over time as well as what is seen as appropriate punishment. It also looks behind the Rule of Law to the underlying socio-economic conditions which mould and direct the law. It examines how the prevailing conditions within society may cause a behaviour considered criminal at one point in time to be acceptable at another and vice versa. For example, The Code of Hammu-rabi decreed death for the fraudulent sale of beer; in Medieval Europe, a person accused of heresy would undergo the ordeal of walking on hot coals as a test of faith; suspected witches were burned at the stake in England and the Star Chamber was renowned for the horror of the tortures carried out in its rooms. The common law tradition evolved from those origins and they form the basis upon which the English legal system is built.
As society changed, The laws which determined what behaviours constituted criminal conduct also changed. Likewise, as more insight was gained into the link between criminal behaviour and other life-style factors, the attitudes toward criminality and the approach to punishment also changed. But in order to fully understand the current state of the criminal law in this country, one needs to understand how it developed in the way it did.
By the use of case studies, the evolution of legal doctrine is examined and analyzed. This book challenges the Orthodox view of the development of the law from its inception in the Period of the Enlightenment in the early Nineteenth century to the present and reveals contradictions inherent in the law. It attempts to show how the Law, in focusing on the abstract individual and decontextualizing his actions from the society in which he lives in the real world, fails to address the underlying social causes of crime.
This analysis provides the reader with an opportunity to look at the way Crime and Punishment have emerged historically and as it is popularly depicted today and question for him or herself the benefits as well the short-comings.