Derecho penal y criminología sociológica: integración y desintegración

In general, each branch of law recognizes the functions of its respective sanctions, without major disagreements among its practitioners, who may disagree on their good or bad use, but not on the nature and function of them. However, there is no agreement among criminal law practitioners in this regard. No other legal field has a similar range of opinions regarding the function of its punishment as our framework of punishment theories, so it is time to recognize that this is a legal anomaly.  We know that the exercise of punitive power serves a purpose and - if we leave books aside - we intuit its very different and multiple consequences, impossible to recognize in their entirety. Sometimes it is possible to perceive that, in certain conflicts, it performs some of the functions theorized in the framework of theories of punishment, but in others it would be absurd to assign the same task to it.  Therefore, each criminalist starts from how he believes the function and object or end of the punishment should be and, according to that subjective choice, justifies and legitimizes a certain measure of the exercise of punitive power. Each criminalist says: the punishment should fulfill this function and, therefore, I legitimize it to the extent that I do so, and I build my legal theory (system) on this premise.