Legal punishment as a secular penitence. Notes on the meaning of punishment application

Abstract

The present work attempts to show a group of relevant arguments to understand the meaning of punishment application, from the thesis drawn by R.A. Duff. It uses the theoretical references of a certain theory of the punishment present in Duff and attempts to project these arguments towards the administrative rationality of the application of criminal punishment. This way, an attempt is made to conciliate the understanding of the punishment with the reasons that are generally associated with religious penitence. On this basis, it is attempted to build an argument on the meanings that the rules of punishment application should have.