When discussing social responses to crime, you mention that punishment implies a recognition of failure of our current mechanisms to prevent crime. Additionally, you say that you are inclined to think that the rational course is to refuse the use of the word “punishment” because it narrows our ideas about how to deal with wrongdoing. Such a shift would mean moving the focus of our criminal justice institutions from retributive justice to crime prevention policy. What role do you see lawyers playing in this new approach?

Well, I think it’s a very complicated multitask social issue. We have to involve people in all parts of society. We have to involve politicians, educators, people who know about nutrition, people who know about family policy, and this is a very difficult task. I think that’s the reason why for so many years society just has not approached crime in this ex-ante way. People would rather just forget about all that and then wait for the crime to occur and come down hard on the offender. If you think about a family and you think about what is necessary in order to bring up a child,  your own child whom you love, you do not wait until the child does something wrong and then discipline the child. You try to give the child a good environment: loving the child, inspiring the child with good examples, feeding the child well, educating the child, and giving the child decent medical care. So I think if we just think about what we would naturally do for our own children––those of us who fortunately have enough money to do those things, then we begin to get the measure of what’s required socially.

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