Introduction to the Symposium.

• Author: Makanju, Anna Adeola
• Position: Introduction

This year's Symposium, Punishment and Its Purposes, seeks to present a broad range of perspectives on criminal punishment practices and to examine whether these practices are achieving intended or desirable ends.

The inspiration for the Symposium was both academic and personal. In legal education, the effectiveness of criminal punishment schemes and their effects on society and the criminals themselves are frequently discussed but rarely deeply explored. While most of these issues are not new, the subject matter is far from being exhausted. And of course, these issues remain tremendously salient. The Symposium was conceived as a way to provide law students with exposure to criminal justice topics they may not have a chance to explore thoroughly during their coursework. We also wanted to offer criminal law scholars a forum in which to discuss and debate each others' work, so that any new ideas could be incorporated into the Articles before they are published.

As I mentioned, for me, the inspiration is also personal. Law students, myself included, tend to evaluate criminal punishment schemes at a comfortable distance from their decidedly uncomfortable implementation. Two years ago I lost the benefit of this distance when my younger sister was arrested for drug possession. Since then, she has struggled unsuccessfully through the criminal justice system. My legal education has been of little help, as my sister's most serious problems are not of a legal nature. The only crime she has been charged with since her first incarceration is noncompliance with probation--a result of her drug addiction and emotional problems--yet she is now serving six months in an Arizona...