Abstract
This article provides an overview of basic approaches to sentencing as they have developed in scholarly discussions over the last decades. The approaches are not presented as a binary choice opposing each other, but as a range of approaches, where on the one extreme an uncontrolled discretion would be provided to the judges, while on the second an exact sentence would be prescribed for each behavior.
The advantages and criticisms of each approach are outlined. The article closes with the discussion of sociological approaches to sentencing.