The Limits of The Criminal Sanction by Herbert L. Packer-Yerkes

Loyola Marymount University and Loyola Law School
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Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review Law Reviews
4-1-1969
The Limits of the Criminal Sanction, by Herbert L.

Packer
Martha S. Yerkes
Recommended Citation
Martha S. Yerkes, The Limits of the Criminal Sanction, by Herbert L. Packer, 2 Loy. L.A. L. Rev. 176 (1969).
Available at: http://digitalcommons.lmu.edu/llr/vol2/iss1/12
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BOOK REVIEWS
THE LIMITS OF THE CRIMINAL SANCTION. BY HERBERT

L. PACKER. STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS, 1968. Pages
375. $8.95
The stated purpose of this book is to give the Common Reader an insight
into the nature and rationale of the criminal sanction, an overview of the
characteristic processes through which it operates, and some criteria for de-
termining the limits of its applicability. The timeliness of the project, as
its author points out, hardly needs emphasis.
Social groups of all sizes, from nations to families, are controlled not
only by a complex system of penalties for the bad behavior of individual
members, but to a significant extent by an equally complex set of rewards
for good behavior. If a disproportionate number of people reject the re-
wards that society has traditionally offered, or have goals that do not seem
to be attainable by adhering to the norms of good conduct, order tends to
break down and there is a drastically increased reliance on punishment as a
means of control. This is apparently what is happening in the United States.
When the resulting dislocation reaches the point where "law and order" be-
comes a political slogan, an irrational response by an alarmed public is
virtually assured unless there is somehow generated a common understand-
ing of what the criminal sanction can and cannot be expected to do and what
its alternatives are. Whether Professor Packer's book is designed to accom-
plish this objective raises an entirely different question.
Its thesis, developed in Part I, when extracted from a thicket of verbiage,
is simple enough. The author elaborates a theory of criminal punishment
based on the proposition that the familiar retributive and utilitarian goals of
the criminal law are not antithetical, that each is a necessary, and that neither is
a sufficient condition for using the criminal sanction. Thus punishment is
justified if, but only if, it tends both to affirmation of ethical absolutes
and also to prevention of antisocial behavior. Actually this justification is
a restrictive definition of crime if crime in legal terms is nothing less than
conduct which is punishable by the criminal law. But before considering
whether there are other criteria for limiting the kinds of conduct that warrant
the criminal sanction and may therefore be called crimes, Professor Packer
examines the limits imposed on the rationale of punishment by the doc-
trinal content of the criminal law.
In two chapters, entitled Culpability and Conduct and Culpability and
Excuses, the author's capacity as a teacher of law shows forth unmistakably
in as nice a summary of the "general part" of the substantive criminal law
19691 BOOK REVIEWS
as I ever hope to see. These chapters test and fortify his theory of pun-
ishment. That they may also prove to be a bonanza for law students, es-
pecially in schools using Paulsen and Kadish, Criminal Law and Its Proc-
esses, since the summary closely follows pages 211 to 486 of that work, is
merely another proof that serendipity endures.
Part I concludes with some general remarks to the effect that the State
should be required in a criminal case to prove the absence of justification
or excuse beyond a reasonable doubt. Since proof of a negative is seldom
satisfactory, the author is undoubtedly correct in observing that this require-
ment would be a powerful curb on the use of the criminal sanction. He also
notes the pyramidal effect of assigning the most severe punishment to the
most serious and least frequent crimes, which limits the flexibility of the
criminal sanction in dealing with more, common and varied offenses.
Part II is devoted to a description of significant stages in the criminal
process from arrest through trial and appeal. With respect to each, the au-
thor indicates how the pertinent legal issues are resolved, first, if crime
control is the dominant value, second, if. the complex of values subsumed
by Due Process prevails. He then states what the present law and its trend
seem to be. This is all rather remote froth the theory of punishment pre-
viously developed at length." But since . it-has to do with some of the most
dramatic issues of the day, including the right to counsel, use of confessions,
electronic surveillance, and illegally obtained evidence, and is written with
some clarity, this is the part of the book most likely to. interest and instruct
that Common Reader to whom it is addressed.-
In Part Ill, Professor Packer returns to his theory of punishment and
uses it to advance the contention that we have overrelied' on the criminal
sanction, that it can effectively control and should therefore be reserved for
relatively few kinds of conduct. Other writers have discussed the ineffec-
tiveness of punishment in controlling various crimes ranging from sex devi-
ancy to drunkenness, the absurdity of including trivial infractions such as
traffic offenses in the category of crime, and the general subject of over-
criminalization. The contribution Professor Packer makes is to abstract and
formulate criteria for determining what kinds of conduct will warrant criminal
punishment. These include the following:
(1) The conduct is viewed, without significant social dissent, as im-
moral.
(2) Subjecting it to the criminal sanction is not inconsistent with the
goals of punishment.
(3) Suppressing it will not inhibit socially desirable conduct.
(4) It can be dealt with even-handedly, without discrimination.
(5) Controlling it through the criminal process will not expose that
process to severe qualitative or quantitative strains.
(6) There are no reasonable alternatives to the criminal sanction.
LOYOLA UNIVERSITY LAW REVIEW [Vol. 2
One of the problems here is that many of these criteria are meaningless
without a fair amount of specialized background knowledge. The first,
for example, is a prudential limitation the evaluation of which requires
more than cursory knowledge of the Hart-Devlin controversy and Mill's
famous "harm to others" formula.
This is characteristic of what I think is a fault that runs in varying degree
throughout the book. The style and content presuppose the reader's ac-
quaintance with legal principles and his understanding of legal jargon, which
justifies an offhand reference to M'Naghten, Durham, or Gideon as a matter
of course. At the same time, for anyone familiar with the literature on the
subject of punishment, much of the material is repetitious. The author thus
risks a fall between two stools. On one side is the Common Reader who
will often find the book difficult if not unintelligible. On the other is the
Academic who will find it boring. I would like to believe that there is a
person in the middle, a lawyer or a judge, who is willing to make his way
through the convolutions of Professor Packer's prose. He may find valu-
able insights. To take one example:
The prevention of crime is an essential aspect of the environmental protection
required if autonomy is to flourish. It is, however, a negative aspect and one
which, pursued with single-minded zeal, may end up creating an environment in
which all are safe but none is free. The limitations included in the concept of
culpability are justified not by an appeal to the Kantian dogma of 'just deserts'
but by their usefulness in keeping the state's powers of protection at a decent re-
move from the lives of its citizens.'
He will discover Emersonian sentences here and there. For instance:
"It is useless to try to define 'reasonable doubt.' What it suggests is not a
'2
quantifiable standard but an adjudicative mood."
And finally this Uncommon Reader who makes the effort may very
likely find his thinking stimulated and structured by the need to consider
basic questions of the use of power in connection with any solution of the
problems involved in setting limits to the criminal sanction.
Martha S. Yerkes*
1H. PACKER, THE LIMITS OF THE CRIMINAL SANCTION 65-66 (1968).

2Id. at 137.
* Professor of Law, Loyola University School of Law.

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Loyola Marymount University and Loyola Law School

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The Limits of the Criminal Sanction, by Herbert L.

THE LIMITS OF THE CRIMINAL SANCTION. BY HERBERT

1H. PACKER, THE LIMITS OF THE CRIMINAL SANCTION 65-66 (1968).

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