Who Dares Fine a Murderer? The Changing Meaning of Money and Fines in Western European Criminal Systems

What is it about?

This paper offers a comprehensive analysis of the historical development of the penal fine as a sanction from the point of view that the changing meaning of money influences the perceived appropriateness of fines as a punishment for every type of offence, or only certain offences. As it is shown here, a series of associations based on the idea of money, its essence and its capabilities had a profound impact on modern European legal culture. The different perception of the significance of money in contrast to freedom explains the rise of imprisonment in the nineteenth century. The present use of fines to punish less serious crimes and misdemeanours within the criminal law is mainly a direct consequence of the development of money and its characteristics of impersonality and interchangeability since the nineteenth century.

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Why is it important?

In this article the fine is analysed focusing not only on the meaning of punishment, but on the neglected dimension of money, stressing that the equivalence of money and punishment is not as straightforward as is sometimes assumed in mainstream literature, which has overlooked the significance of money in the historical evolution of punishment.