Theorising pecuniary punishments offers a unique vantage point from which to consider the core of punitive rationale probing

g the depths of why we punish in particular ways, why some punishments appear more appropriate than others for particular offences, and conversely, why the idea of assigning certain punishments to particular offences evokes a certain outrage or disgust by way of public response. This may be partly a function of the communicative function of penal practices. Punishment may be considered to have three communicative characteristics: condemnation, denunciation, and censure (Banks 2012: 111). Sentencing thus is imbued with a form of symbolic force. Duff (1999/2003) outlines the criteria in which a punishment must suffice in order to fulfil this communicative function, including an demonstrable fit between crime and punishment that is expressly apparent to the offender, a dialectical relation between the message and response received, and an appeal to the offenders rationality, underpinned by emphasis on the causal relationship between the offence and the consequence (Duff, 2001). The broader aim is to transmit an appreciation that crime was wrong and to direct the offender towards reflexive repentance; and ultimately, for the offender once rehabilitated to return to the community. Employing religious metaphors, Duff likens this to the sinner after penitence being (re)embraced by the congregation. This analogy may also be extended to crime cases of public interest, where the television interview functions as a contemporary confessional, and the camera-clad fist of the paparazzi replaces the solitude of the pew. Degradation rituals (Garfinkel)It follows, then, that if the relation of the crime to the punishment is of an arbitrary nature, then the communicative expressive function is lost. Reducing the social harm engendered by crime to a financial transaction may be at the core of commentators (notably those of the US) assertions that the fine lacks affirmative rehabilitative value (National Commission on Reform of Federal Criminal Laws 1971: 296, cited in OMalley 2009: 12). Durkheim first what does it say maybe in former para?). OMalley deduces differential governmental rationalities emerging in the US and European penal complexes respectively, with money punishments functioning as a barometer of the severity of crime and reducible to its equivalent as prison time in the latter, whilst regarded as inadequate within the former (OMalley 2009: 14). A point of convergence, however, may be located within the eventual dissociation between the fine and reformative capacity, particularly concerning those offences which it is deemed do not require alteration of the person clumsy. This is similar in analysis to Rusche and Kirchheimers delineation between the criminal and the administrative offence; the latter likened in Benthamite fashion to a licence, but developed in light of Foucaults Discipline and Punish (Foucault 1979). This theory, formulated by Antony Bottoms, outlines the contemporary division between the disciplinary and the regulatory (Bottoms 1983). Those offences which require mere regulation, a gentle coercive steer towards compliance to ensure that the greatest proportion conforms are directed towards the desired behaviour via the disincentive of a fixed penalty for failing to observe the rule(s). By contrast, those crimes that command the effect of transformative correction are drawn into the disciplinary penal complex. In this sense, the fine may be considered to be the quintessential punishment of the consumer society, self-regulating and dictated by the conditions of the market whilst disposing of those who are beyond its discipline. A consequence of this in effect is a dichotomous system, or two discrete systems, comprising of an impartial judgeless, judgement free dispenser of backdated licences for a fixed fee on one hand, and the uneven hand of disciplinary (in)justice that is partial in its bearing on the other. In this way, we may witness: a bifurcation of the impact and experience of punishment as between those accused who can afford to pay up and thereby maintain their autonomy and distance from the justice system and those in poverty who cannot (Munro and McNeill 2010: 211). Flawed consumers->Low-end justice neoliberalism?