Social policy can be broadly defined as those institutionalized actions designed to promote the welfare of the collective. Penal policy then may be seen as a strategy or set of strategies in the promotion of welfare, the success of which will be judged in the context of social policies as a whole. Since the rehabilitative model of penal policy has been found ineffective other alternatives, especially the punitive justice model, have been endorsed by both leftist and rightist theoreticians. The leftist concept of the penal system assumes that a just penal policy depends on a just society and is therefore committed to socialist values and to the necessity for social policies to achieve them. Further, the role of the penal system is reduced to that of the last resort, and the rehabilitative ideal is discarded mainly because it disguises social injustices. However, the rightist conception of the crime problem is rooted in certain views of human nature and involves the existence of two groups of populations: a criminal class, for whom an incapacitative policy is recommended, and others, for whom a deterrent policy is appropriate. Therefore, penal policies should be concerned with minimizing crime and reassuring the lawabiding, and they ought to be separated from social policies which should not be judged by their effects on the crime problem. Both leftist and rightist justice model theorists agree that a reformed penal system must minimize discretion by State agents and should be noncoercive. In addition, decriminalization of some acts is endorsed and expected to result in strengthening of other forms of social control, the most important of which is community control. However, past experience shows that bureaucracy and communalism are contradictory and cannot be integrated successfully. Therefore, it should be determined which matters are more appropriately handled in the bureaucratic mode and which in the communal mode. A brief history of social policy in Great Britain and a discussion of the abolitionist and Marxist models are included. No references are given.