While punishment is a longstanding object of philosophical scrutiny, other controversial aspects of the justice system, such as policing, have flown under the radar. In this paper, we consider possible reasons why philosophers interested in crime and punishment have neglected policing. We make the case for a broader account of the political morality of the justice system, with a particular emphasis on policing. We sketch the outlines of an egalitarian version of such a theory, highlighting parallels between policing (...) and the welfare state. Finally, we turn to recent calls for police abolition. Evaluating such radical claims requires, we argue, going beyond the traditional confines of the philosophy of punishment and considering a more holistic and interdisciplinary theory of criminal justice. (shrink)

These are some of the many questions contemplated in these essays, which explore the contributions of nine major thinkers and traditions regarding the question of punitive justice.

In this article I argue for a full appraisal of Hobbes's theory of punishment which takes account of its divergent and contradictory aspects. Examining his theory within the general context of his position in Leviathan, it is possible to see its centrality for the subsequent development of the modern philosophy of punishment. From this point of view, it is also possible to pinpoint the source of a central weakness in the retributive theory of punishment.

In spite of his stature as a major figure in the history of political philosophy and his strong interest in the correlation between liberty and the content of criminal law, surprisingly little has been written concerning Montesquieu's views on crime and punishment. Even less has been written about his views on the philosophical justification of punishment. Unlike Locke, Rousseau and Beccaria, he did not use social contract theory to justify punishment. Close analysis of Books VI and (...) XII of The Spirit of Laws (1748) reveals that he combined utilitarian, retributivist and liberal themes in his approach to punishment, while locating the fundamental justification for the right to punish capital crimes in the retributivist rationale of doing justice. As noted by Beccaria and numerous others whom he influenced, moderation in punishments and decriminalization of religious offences were key themes in his discussions. (shrink)

The paper is a critical examination of the main attempts at a reconciliation of the two theories of legal punishment: the utilitarian and the retributive. four middle-of-the-road theories of punishment are discussed with hart's theory offering a genuine synthesis of two approaches (negative retribution and positive retribution). (edited).

This Handbook provides a comprehensive survey of major topics in the philosophy of punishment from many of the field’s leading scholars. Key features Presents a history of punishment theory from ancient times to the present. Evaluates the main proposed justifications of punishment, including retributivism, general and specific deterrence theories, mixed theories, expressivism, societal-defense theory, fair play theory, rights forfeiture theory, and the public health-quarantine model. Discusses sentencing, proportionality, policing, prosecution, and the role punishment plays in (...) the context of the state. Examines advances in neuroscience and debates about whether free will skepticism undermines the justifiability of punishment. Considers forgiveness, restorative justice, and calls to abolish punishment. Addresses pressing social issues such as mass incarceration, juvenile justice, punitive torture, the death penalty, and “cruel and unusual” punishment. · With its unmatched breadth and depth, this book is essential reading for scholars who want to keep abreast of the field and for advanced students wishing to explore the frontiers of the subject. (shrink)

Nursing practice in correctional settings is ethically unique. Its premise is the contradiction between causing harm (the purpose of imprisonment) and acting for patients’ good (the purpose of health care). I describe three ethical regions in which correctional nurses can practise, based on different philosophies: punishment as retribution, as rationality, and as paradox. Retribution and rationality resolve the ethical contradiction by relegating offenders to intractable otherness. Restorative nursing based on paradox is an oppositional practice that preserves the contradiction, making (...) engagement possible between prisoner and nurse. Endorsement by nursing of one of the three philosophies of punishment could redefine care for the entire profession. (shrink)

Written by interdisciplinary authors from the fields of educational policy, early childhood education, history, political philosophy, law, and moral philosophy, this volume addresses the use of disciplinary action across varied educational contexts. Much of the punishment of children occurs in non-criminal contexts, in educational and social settings, and schools are institutions where young people are subject to disciplinary practices and justifications that are quite unlike those found elsewhere. In addition to this, the discipline they receive is often (...) discriminatory, being disproportionately focused on students of colour and other minoritized identities, and unjust in other ways. This timely text is a comprehensive examination of punishment in schools, prompting discussions on racial equity, social justice in education and the school to prison pipeline. Each chapter offers empirically informed, theoretical investigations into punishment in educational settings, including how punishment is understood, whether it is permissible to discipline students, and whether such punishment can be considered educational. (shrink)

This classic collection of essays, first published in 1968, represents H.L.A. Hart's landmark contribution to the philosophy of criminal responsibility and punishment. Unavailable for ten years, this new edition reproduces the original text, adding a new critical introduction by John Gardner, a leading contemporary criminal law theorist.

In _The Immorality of Punishment_ Michael Zimmerman argues forcefully that not only our current practice but indeed any practice of legal punishment is deeply morally repugnant, no matter how vile the behaviour that is its target. Despite the fact that it may be difficult to imagine a state functioning at all, let alone well, without having recourse to punishing those who break its laws, Zimmerman makes a timely and compelling case for the view that we must seek and put (...) into practice alternative means of preventing crime and promoting social stability. (shrink)

The philosophy of punishment’s focus on the question of justification has left the question of definition neglected. This article explains why there is a need for necessary and sufficient conditions for punishment and offers a new account. Under the theory proposed, to inflict a punishment is to make fewer things permissible for another to do. Since not every such restriction is punishment, an account is offered of the additional conditions needing to be met. One implication (...) of the resulting theory is that some prominent cases in which the question of definition needed to be answered were wrongly decided. (shrink)

Punishment involves the intentional infliction of harm and suffering. Both of the most prominent families of justifications of punishment – retributivism and consequentialism – face several moral concerns that are hard to overcome. Moreover, the effectiveness of current criminal punishment methods in ensuring society’s safety is seriously undermined by empirical research. Thus, it appears to be a moral imperative for a modern and humane society to seek alternative means of administering justice. The special issue of Diametros “The (...) Abolition of Punishment: Is a Non-Punitive Criminal Justice System Ethically Justified?” was brought into life precisely to give the authors a platform for such progressive inquiries. And it is now safe to say that this platform has been put to excellent use, since Valerij Zisman, Alexander Stachurski, Giorgia Brucato, Perica Jovchevski, Sofia M. I. Jeppsson, Stephen G. Morris, Benjamin Vilhauer, John Lemos, Saul Smilansky, Elizabeth Shaw, Mirko Farina, Andrea Lavazza and Sergei Levin have presented such thought-provoking texts that they are bound to set the stage for debate in the years to come. This article is an introduction to this special issue and to the authors’ papers. (shrink)

Philosophers, legal scholars, criminologists, psychiatrists and psychologists have long asked important questions about punishment: What is its purpose? What theories helps us better understand its nature? Is punishment just? Are there effective alternatives to punishment? How can empirical data from the sciences help us better understand punishment? What are the relationships between punishment and our biology, psychology and social environment? How is punishment understood and administered differently in different societies? The Routledge Handbook of the (...) Philosophy and Science of Punishment is the first major reference work to address these and other important questions in detail, offering 31 chapters from an international and interdisciplinary team of experts, in a single, comprehensive volume. It covers the major theoretical approaches to punishment and its alternatives, emerging research from biology, psychology, and social neuroscience, and important special issues like the side-effects of punishment and solitary confinement, racism and stigmatization, the risk and protective factors for antisocial behavior, and victims' rights and needs. The Handbook is conveniently organized into four sections: I. Theories of Punishment and Contemporary Perspectives II. Philosophical Perspectives on Punishment III. Sciences, Prevention and Punishment IV. Alternatives to Current Punishment Practices A volume Introduction and a comprehensive index help make The Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy and Science of Punishment essential reading for upper-undergraduate and postgraduate students in disciplines such as philosophy, law, criminology, psychology and forensic psychiatry, and highly relevant to a variety of other disciplines such as political and social sciences, behavioral and neurosciences, and global studies. It is also an ideal resource for anyone interested in current theories, research, and programs dealing with the problem of punishment. (shrink)

My book, Punishment, has three aims: to provide the most comprehensive and updated examination of the philosophy of punishment available, to advance a new theory—the unified theory of punishment—as a compelling alternative to available theories and to consider the relation of theory to practice. In his recent review article, Mark Tunick raises several concerns with my analysis. I address each of these concerns and argue they rest largely on misinterpretations which I restate and clarify here.

This study focuses on the practice of punishment, as it is inflicted by the state. The author's first-hand experience with penal reform, combined with philosophical reflection, has led him to develop a theory of punishment that identifies the principles of sentencing and corrections on which modern correctional systems should be built. This new theory of punishment is built on the view that the central function of the law is to reduce the need to use force in the (...) resolution of disputes. Professor Cragg argues that the proper role of sentencing and sentence administration is to sustain public confidence in the capacity of the law to fulfil that function. Sentencing and corrections should therefore be guided by principles of restorative justice. He points out that, although punishment may be an inevitable concomitant of law enforcement in general and sentencing in particular, inflicting punishment is not a legitimate objective of criminal justice. The strength and appeal of this account is that it moves well beyond the boundaries of conventional discussions. It examines punishment within the framework of policing and adjudication, analyses the relationship between punishment and sentencing, and provides a basis for evaluating correctional practices and such developments as electronic monitoring. (shrink)

This book advances a new interpretation of Hart's penal philosophy. Positioning itself in opposition to current interpretations, the book argues that Hart does not defend a mixed theory of punishment, nor a rule-utilitarian theory of punishment, nor a liberal form of utilitarianism, nor a goal and constraint approach. Rather, it is argued, his penal philosophy is based on his moral pluralism, which comprises two aspects: value pluralism and pluralism with respect to forms of moral reason. It (...) is held that this means, on the one hand, that criminal law has an irreducible complexity due to the compromises it makes to accommodate competing values, and on the other hand, that there need not be one single justification of punishment. This original interpretation is not based only on Hart's key volume on the subject Punishment and Responsibility, but on a careful reading of his complete works. The book will be a valuable resource for academics and researchers interested in Hart's philosophy, the philosophy of law and criminal law. (shrink)

Punishment is a topic of increasing importance for citizens and policy-makers. The same can be said for academic researchers and students. Mass imprisonment has reached record high levels while public confidence is often lacking. New thinking is required urgently to address these challenges. Moreover, there have been several key developments in the philosophy of punishment over the last 20 years absent in leading guides including the communicative theory of punishment, restorative justice and my novel unified theory (...) of punishment. -/- My book Punishment is a critical introduction to the philosophy of punishment attempting to offer a new and refreshing approach to benefit scholars and students alike. While the book is primarily philosophical, it brings together relevant insights from law, criminology, criminal justice, politics and sociology. The aim is to provide both a comprehensive overview with new insights on many familiar theories of punishment. (shrink)

Definitions and distinctions -- Classification -- Of the ends of punishment -- Cases unmeet for punishment -- Expense of punishment -- Measure of punishment -- Of the properties to be given to a lot of punishment -- Of analogy between crimes and punishment -- Of retaliation -- Popularity -- Simple afflictive punishments -- Of complex afflictive punishments -- Of restrictive punishments--territorial confinement -- Imprisonment -- Imprisonment--fees -- Imprisonment examined -- General scheme of imprisonment -- (...) Of other species of territorial confinement--quasi-imprisonment--relegation--banishment -- Of simply restrictive punishments -- Of active or laborious punishment -- Capital punishment -- Capital punishment examined -- Punishment analyzed -- Of the punishments belonging to the moral sanction -- Forfeiture of reputation -- Of pecuniary forfeitures -- Forfeiture of condition -- Forfeiture of the protection of the law -- Naturally extravasting punishment--rules concerning it -- Punishment apparently, but not really, mis-seated--civil responsibility -- Mis-seated punishment, varieties of -- Vicarious punishment -- Transitive punishment -- Disadvantages of this mode of punishment -- Collective punishment -- Random punishment -- Cause of the frequency of mis-seated punishment -- Inconveniences of complex punishments -- Of transportation -- Panopticon penitentiary -- Felony -- Of præmunire -- Outlawry -- Excommunication -- Choice of punishment--latitude to be allowed to the judges -- Of subsidiary punishments -- Of surety for good conduct -- Defeazance of punishment. (shrink)

First published in 1929, this book explores the crucial, ethical question of the objects and the justification of punishment. Dr. A. C. Ewing considers both the retributive theory and the deterrent theory on the subject whilst remaining commendably unprejudiced. The book examines the views which emphasize the reformation of the offender and the education of the community as objects of punishment. It also deals with a theory of reward as a compliment to a theory of punishment. Dr. (...) Ewing’s treatment of the topics is philosophical yet he takes in to account the practical considerations that should determine the nature and the amount of the punishment to be inflicted in different types of cases. This book will be of great interest to students of philosophy, teachers and those who are interested in the concrete problems of punishment by the state. It is an original contribution to the study of a subject of great theoretical and practical importance. (shrink)

The Biopolitics of Punishment marks a new chapter in the long-standing debate between Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucault. The essays collected in this volume chart the undertheorized dialogue between the two philosophers on questions of life, death, punishment, power, and resistance.

The Retributivist approach to punishment attempts to address the challenges posed by utilitarian conception that punitive actions should strictly be associated with a costeffective means to certain independently identifiable goods at the expense of justice. Justice proffers how the guilty deserve to be punished and no moral consideration relevant to punishment outweighs an offender’s criminal desert. However, this just desert provokes difficulty in discerning proportionality between the moral gravity of each offence and the specific penalties attached. This consequently (...) degenerates to another form of ‘lex talionis’ (revenge) in punitive justice. (shrink)

T he O bject of this paper is the development of a view of punishment which incorporates what is of importance in retributive and utilitarian justifications of the practice of punishment. This proposed theory was noted and referred to as the plene esse , but not fully worked out, in the course of a discussion paper in which my concern was to offer an alternative view, to that of Mr Anthony Quinton, by construing ‘the right to punishment’ (...) as meaning that ‘the offender has the right to be regarded as responsible for his actions’. (shrink)

It is frequently argued that wrongdoers forfeit, through their wrongdoing, their previously held claim rights against being punished. But this is a mistake. Wrongdoers do not forfeit their claim rights against being punished when they violate rights. They forfeit their _immunity_ to having their claim rights against being punished removed. The reason for this, I argue, is that when they violate rights, wrongdoers culpably disregard the authority of right-holders to negotiate the conditions under which it is permissible to interact with (...) them. The effect of this, far from undermining the authority of right-holders, is to transfer authority to right-holders to unilaterally impose the ‘conditions of interaction’ on wrongdoers _after_ the violation. The conditions can be imposed for a diverse range of reasons and can take a variety of forms, including punishment. In this essay I explain and defend this new ‘unilateral authority theory’ of punishment. (shrink)

Many researchers have assumed that punishment evolved as a behavior-modification strategy, i.e. that it evolved because of the benefits resulting from the punishees modifying their behavior. In this article, however, we describe two alternative mechanisms for the evolution of punishment: punishment as a loss-cutting strategy (punishers avoid further exploitation by punishees) and punishment as a cost-imposing strategy (punishers impair the violator’s capacity to harm the punisher or its genetic relatives). Through reviewing many examples of punishment (...) in a wide range of taxa, we show that punishment is common among plant and animal species and that the two mechanisms we describe have often been important for the evolution of punishment. (shrink)

At the end of the first part of the Philosophy of Right, Hegel outlines a retributivist theory of criminal punishment. According to this view, crime is an infringement of right, a negation which itself must be negated in order to establish the actuality of right. Crime is superseded through punishment, which inflicts on the criminal an injury that is equal in magnitude or “value” to the injury inflicted by the crime itself. Nothing in this account appears to (...) foreclose the possibility that an appropriate penalty for some crimes may be death. Indeed, some passages in the Philosophy of Right strongly imply an acceptance of the legitimacy of capital punishment for certain crimes, such as murder. (shrink)

I want to discuss philosophically, to glance at the logic of, the parts of this expression “the justification of punishment” and then to draw from this discussion one or two morals for discussions of the justification of punishment. This paper is based on one originally given to the Scots Philosophy Club at its Aberdeen meeting in 1953, as the third part of a symposium on The Justification of Punishment.

In this chapter, I consider contemporary consequentialist theories of punishment. Consequentialist theories of punishment look to the consequences of punishment to justify the institution of punishment. Two types of theories fall into this category—teleology and aggregationism. I argue that teleology is implausible as it is based on a problematic assumption about the fundamental value of criminal punishment, and that aggregationism provides a more reasonable alternative. Aggregationism holds that punishment is morally justified because it is (...) an institution that helps society to aggregate important moral values. Several theories fall into this category, including general deterrence theories, specific deterrence theories, and preventionism. I critically evaluate these theories and argue that only one specific deterrence theory, namely, my rights-protection theory, provides the most reasonable consequentialist account of punishment. (shrink)

ABSTRACTI argue that the degree to which a criminal should be punished is determined by three elements: a baseline amount that proportionally compensates the victim and an additional penalty that, first, reforms the criminal and, second, deters others from becoming unjust. My interpretation provides a solution to the interpretive puzzle that has most vexed commentators: the alleged tension between Plato's philosophical theory of punishment and the content of his penal code. I defend a two-step solution to the puzzle. First, (...) on my interpretation, because of the broad role that deterrence must play, this alleged tension is—to a degree—merely apparent. Second, the actual tension can be explained by Plato's commitment to the rule of law, given the epistemic limitations of actual people. (shrink)

In this article I spell out a conception of dignity grounded in African moral thinking that provides a plausible philosophical foundation for human rights, focusing on the particular human right not to be executed by the state. I first demonstrate that the South African Constitutional Court’s sub-Saharan explanations of why the death penalty is degrading all counterintuitively entail that using deadly force against aggressors is degrading as well. Then, I draw on one major strand of Afro-communitarian thought to develop a (...) novel conception of dignity as the view that what is special and inviolable about human nature is our capacity for harmonious relationships. I argue that a principle of respect for the dignity of such a capacity entails that the death penalty is an indignity but that deadly force in self- or other-defense need not be, and I contend that this African- inspired principle promises to do no worse than the more Western, Kantian principle of respect for autonomy at accounting for a broad range of human rights. (shrink)

Among the many assaults upon widely held views in social and political philosophy to be found in Robert Nozick's Anarchy, State, and Utopia, is a novel criticism of the utilitarian deterrence theory of punishment. Nozick believes that this criticism is absolutely decisive, and, indeed, in his words, establishes the utilitarian deterrence theory's "non existence." The purpose of this paper is to show that Nozick's criticism rests upon a tacit crucial error about the nature of punishment. This error, (...) while an elementary one, is evidently easy to make since not only Nozick falls prey to it but also some prominent utilitarians themselves. Recognizing the error makes possible a more careful statement of the utilitarian deterrence theory that avoids Nozick's criticism. (shrink)

Expressivist theories of punishment received largely favorable treatment in the 1980s and 1990s. Perhaps predictably, the 2000s saw a slew of critical rejections of the view. It is now becoming evident that, while several objections to expressivism have found their way into print, three concerns are proving particularly popular. So the time is right for a big picture assessment. What follows is an attempt to show that these three dominant objections are not decisive reasons to give up the most (...) plausible forms of the view. Moreover, in addition to the three common objections, expressivism has an acknowledged question mark concerning whether the value of punitive expression outweighs its drawbacks. Here I also map out some promising avenues that the expressivist can take to answer this question. (shrink)

The twelve essays in this volume aim at providing philosophers, neuroscientists, psychologists, and legal theorists with an opportunity to examine the cluster of related issues that will need to be addressed as scholars struggle to come to grips with the picture of human agency being pieced together by researchers in the biosciences.