This chapter discusses the issue of punishment and the importance of the principle of responsibility. It identifies two areas where punishment looks backward rather than forward: the conviction by a Court, and the other to the Court's sentence. It argues that these two backward-looking requirements are closely related because scepticism about one leads to scepticism about the other. It further argues that the principle of responsibility, which may be sacrificed when the social cost of maintaining it is too high, has a value and importance that is independent of retributive or denunciatory theories of punishment, which may very well be discarded.
Keywords: criminal punishment, criminal responsibility, utilitarianism, conviction, sentence,