Includes bibliographical references (pages 329-383) and index.
Contents:
Free will, legal punishment, and retributivism -- Free will skepticism : hard Incompatibilism and hard luck -- The epistemic argument against retributivism -- Additional reasons for rejecting retributivism -- Consequentialist, educational, and mixed theories of punishment -- The public health-quarantine model I : a nonretributive approach to criminal behavior -- The public health-quarantine model II : the social determinants of health and criminal behavior -- Public health-quarantine model III : human dignity, victims' rights, rehabilitation, and preemptive incapacitation -- Public health-quarantine model IV : funishment, deterrence, evidentiary standards, and indefinite detention.
Summary:
"Within the criminal justice system one of the most prominent justifications for legal punishment, both historically and currently, is retributivism. The retributive justification of legal punishment maintains that, absent any excusing conditions, wrongdoers are morally responsible for their actions and deserve to be punished in proportion to their wrongdoing. Unlike theories of punishment that aim at deterrence, rehabilitation, or incapacitation, retributivism grounds punishment in the blameworthiness and desert of offenders. It holds that punishing wrongdoers is intrinsically good. For the retributivist, wrongdoers deserve a punitive response proportional to their wrongdoing, even if their punishment serves no further purpose. This means that the retributivist position is not reducible to consequentialist considerations nor in justifying punishment does it appeal to wider goods such as the safety of society or the moral improvement of those being punished"-- Provided by publisher.
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