Download or read book Punishment and Culture written by Philip Smith and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2008-03-15 with total page 229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Philip Smith attacks the comfortable notion that punishment is about justice, reason and law. Instead, he argues that punishment is an essentially irrational act founded in ritual as a means to control evil without creating more of it in the process.