In classical criminal law and legal policy, crime demanded punishment. Penalties were considered payment of debts to society, and severe or inhumane penalties were designed to have a deterrent effect, although the real motivation for sanctions remained the policy of expiation. Earlier the prince or the king required punishment of an offense against God as His representative on earth. Despite major changes in doctrinal theory and in the mechanisms for applying law, the criminal code itself has remained the same. The objectives of sanctions are not specified: legislators have left application of the law to judges and administrators, without any particular general criminal policy having developed. As a result, repression is today, as in 1867, based on theories of intention and expiation, and neither general nor particular statements of criminal policy limit arbitrary application of the law. Under this system, penalties or definitions become fictions: fines are only imposed for adultery to support charges in civil proceedings, and extradition is refused under the fictive pretext that the wanted individual is a political offender. Essentially, leaving interpretation of the intention of the law to the judge is a violation of the principle of separation of powers when the judge only affirms because of tradition or conviction a general policy which was accepted at the time of the code's passage. While a revised criminal code should not date itself by becoming too explicit in stating general policy, it should move beyond the principles of intention and expiation. Notes are supplied.