Penologists have been concerned with justifications for the punishment of criminal offenders and whether punishment has utilitarian values, such as inhibiting the person from doing it again (specific deterrence) or discouraging others from engaging in similar behavior (general deterrence). The evaluation of penal measures has focused on whether or not some sanctions are more likely than others to have general deterrent effects or specific deterrent effect. Research on specific deterrence has proliferated in the context of the notion that particular penal sanctions, properly administered, can have "rehabilitative" effects and prevent recidivism. Some penologists deem the concept of rehabilitation to be vacuous, but arguments for the rehabilitative ideal continue, as to sanctions justified as rehabilitative. Penologists have also analyzed the maintenance of order in penal settings, especially the prison. Overall, penology is technocratic, pragmatic, and administrative, but the field has been substantially broadened and enhanced in the past two decades through a heightened interest in the subject by historians and sociologists. Increasingly scholars have focused on the penal system for the understanding it can provide about basic issues in social and political theory such as the role of the State, the dimensions of professionalization and bureaucratization in society, how the penal institution intersects with other institutions in the constitution of society, and the contemporary political significance of punishment in relation to the moral sensibilities it evokes and the level of protection it invokes. 70-item annotated reading list