The Legal Theory Bookworm recommends Answering for Crime by Antony Duff. Here is a description:
This is the paperback edition of Antony Duff's acclaimed new work on
the structures of criminal law and criminal liability. His starting
point is a distinction between responsibility (understood as
answerability) and liability, and a conception of responsibility as
relational and practice-based. This focus on responsibility, as a
matter of being answerable to those who have the standing to call one
to account, throws new light on a range of questions in criminal law
theory: on the question of criminalisation, which can now be cast as
the question of what we should have to answer for, and to whom, under
the threat of criminal conviction and punishment; on questions about
the criminal trial, as a process through which defendants are called to
answer, and about the conditions (bars to trial) given which a trial
would be illegitimate; on questions about the structure of offences,
the distinction between offences and defences, and the phenomena of
strict liability and strict responsibility; and on questions about the
structures of criminal defences. The net result is not a theory of
criminal law; but it is an account of the structure of criminal law as
an institution through which a liberal polity defines a realm of public
wrongdoing, and calls those who perpetrate (or are accused of
perpetrating) such wrongs to account.
And from the reviews:
‘For a criminal law theorist, this book is simply a must read. Duff's sweeping coverage of criminal law—ranging from the act requirement to justifications and excuses—offers a structural edifice that is indispensible.’ Kimberley Kessler Ferzan, Criminal Justice Ethics, 2009
‘Philosophers who specialize in normative inquiries but find the time to read only one book in criminal theory every few years should immediately place Answering for Crime at the very top of their pile.’ Douglas Husak, Law and Philosophy, 2009