Penal Philosophy

His ideas are difficult to grasp. The reader of Penal Philosophy may discover in any of its nine chapters a diversity of subjects attacked with different modes of reasoning supported by contradictory discursive techniques. Tarde's literary style is frequently convoluted, although sometimes quite elegant. It is often irritatingly polemical and even obscure. Nevertheless, within this volume one can discern that the several strands of Tarde's criminology are in fact complementary approaches to a common goal, namely, the procurement of an acceptable "neo-classical" basis for criminal responsibility and punishment.

Tarde constructs a sociological explanation of crime in which the individual is ultimately the principal actor, and suggests forms of penalty whose principles avoided the determinist implications of positivism. In these ways, Tarde's Penal Philosophy helped to forge the dominant features of neoclassical jurisprudence. This book will be of keen interest to students of criminology, jurisprudence, and sociology.