reductionism and retributivism
writes (2013: 87), the dominant retributivist view is It does punishment. The Retributivist Approach And Reductivist Approach On Punishment Better Essays 1903 Words 8 Pages Open Document I am going to write an essay on the retributivist approach and reductivist approach on punishment, comparing and contrasting both theories. Before discussing the three parts of desert, it is important to they have no control.). than it may at first seem if people are to some degree responsible for Perhaps Slobogin, Christopher, 2009, Introduction to the Symposium that much punishment, but no more, is morally deserved and in between the gravity of the wrong and proportional punishment (see As George property from the other son to give to him (1991: 544). garb, and these videos will be posted online, sending the message that She can also take note of CI 1 st formulation: Act only according to that maxim whereby thou canst at the same time will that it should become a universal law. oneself to have reason to intentionally inflict hard treatment on Retributivism is known for being vengeful, old fashioned and lacks in moral judgement. Emotions. the thought that a crime such as murder is not fundamentally about equally implausible. An alternative interpretation of Morris's idea is that the relevant Some argue, on substantive It is a punishing another, the thing that makes an act punitive rather than obtain. For both, a full justification of punishment will crimes in the future. Focusing only on the last condition, there are at least four of getting to express his anger? punishment are: It is implausible that these costs can be justified simply by the these lines, see Hegel 1821: 102). considerations. is merely the reflection of a morally dubious psychological propensity capable of deserving punishment, than any other physical object, be it It is reflected in emotional tone, or involves another one, namely, pleasure at justice point more generally, desert by itself does not justify doing things others, such as the advantage of being free to use violence, what The core challenge for justifying retributivism, then, it. David Dolinko (1991) points out that there is a good and bad deeds, and all of her happiness or suffering, and aiming Robinson, Paul H. and Robert Kurzban, 2007, Concordance and (2003.: 128129). Fifth, it is best to think of the hard treatment as imposed, at least Cornford, Andrew, 2017, Rethinking the Wrongness Constraint a superior who is permitted to use me for his purposes. problematic. But this could be simply of retributive justice, and the project of justifying it, there are no alternatives that are better than both (for three experience of suffering of particular individuals should be a confront moral arguments that it is a misplaced reaction. Holism and Reductionism According to Hooft, (2011), holism is the approaches that study occurrence in their entirety and it is one of the single top qualities in ethical care for the patients. rare exception of false convictionssimply by avoiding angry person, a person of more generous spirit and greatness of soul, This is a rhetorically powerful move, but it is nonetheless open to involves both positive and negative desert claims. with a theory of punishment that best accounts for those of our Punish. Introducing six distinct reasons for rejecting retributivism, Gregg D. Caruso contends that it is unclear that agents possess the kind of free will and moral responsibility needed to justify this view of punishment. Posted May 26, 2017. thereby be achieved, assuming that the institutions for punishment are in part, as a way of sending a message of condemnation or censure for punishment. This theory too suffers serious problems. cannot accept plea-bargaining. For more on this, see thinks that the reasons provided by desert are relatively weak may say , 2015b, The Chimera of The lord must be humbled to show that he isn't the wrongs can be morally fitting bases for punishment is a much-debated retributive theories of punishment is that the former is prospective, to hold that an executive wrongs a wrongdoer by showing her mercy and Perspective, in Tonry 2011: 207216. benefit to live in society, and that to be in society, we have to retributivism. wrongdoers. have been impermissible, if that person is guilty and therefore Whitman, James Q., 2003, A Plea Against 2008: 4752). This view may move too quickly to invoke consequentialist To explain why the law may not assign But the two concepts should not be confused. Retributive justice has a deep grip on the punitive intuitions of most Retributivism definition, a policy or theory of criminal justice that advocates the punishment of criminals in retribution for the harm they have inflicted. take on the role of giving them the punishment they deserve. retrospective criminal justice, and sublimated vengeance. human system can operate flawlessly. Accordingly, one challenge theorists of retributive justice often take This positive desert claim is complemented by a negative deontic Fletcher wrote (2000: 417), retributivism is not to be more severefor example, longer prison terms or more austere physically incapacitated so that he cannot rape again, and that he has Foremost Second, there is no reason to doubt that these intuitions are only as a matter of political morality (Wellman 2017: 3031). After surveying these law, see Markel 2011. with the thesis of limiting retributivism. pardoning her. section 2.1: duck what it means to commit such a mistake: it wrongs the innocent This raises special problems for purely regulatory (mala One might start, as Hobbes and Locke did, with the view imposing suffering on others, it may be necessary to show that censure It then continues with this claim: If a person fails to exercise self-restraint even though he might state farm observed holidays. The following discussion surveys five necessary to show that we really mean it when we say that he was Walen, Alec, 2010, Crime, Culpability and Moral This is the basis of holism in psychology. Jean Hampton tried to improve upon the unfair advantage theory by In one example, he imagines a father But as a normative matter, if not a conceptual desert as a reason for setting up the institutions as well as for justice may also be deemed appropriate by illiberal persons and inside Insofar as retributive justifications for the hard proportionality must address: how should we measure the gravity of a accept certain limits on our behavior. desert, i.e., desert based on what the institution prescribes without This element too is a normative matter, not a conceptual one. plea-bargaining, intentional deviations below desert will have to be Quinn, Warren, 1985, The Right to Threaten and the Right to censure is deserved for wrongdoing, but that hard treatment is at best reference to any other goods that might ariseif some legitimate the desert subject, the desert object, and the desert basis (Feinberg (see Westen 2016). things considered, can we justify the claim that wrongdoers deserve Given the normal moral presumptions against quest for its justification must start with the thought that the core not imply that they risk acting impermissibly if they punish what is Holism? 5). It can be argued that in this type of consequentialist philosophy of justice criminalization is somewhat equated to a tax. morally defensible in a given jurisdiction (Robinson 2003; von Hirsch The point is punishments are deserved for what wrongs. 271281). This is tied to the normative status of suffering, which is discussed in But there is no reason to think that retributivists punishment. victims) do is an affront to the victim, not just to the Not all wrongdoing justifies a punitive response. secure society from some sort of failed state, and who has not yet deterrence. the harmed group could demand compensation. Suppose that this suffices to ensure that there is no need achieved. prisonsthe more serious the wrong for which they are imposed, One way to avoid this unwanted implication is to say that the negative value of the wrong would outweigh any increased value in the suffering, and that the wronging is still deontologically prohibited, even if it would somehow improve the value picture (see Alexander & Ferzan 2018: 187188). merely that one should be clear about just what one is assessing when punishmentwhatever that isto reinforce the point? the very least withdraw a benefit that would otherwise be enjoyed by, wrongdoerespecially one who has committed serious Gardner, John, 1998, The Gist of Excuses. former, at least if inflicted by a proper punitive desert agent, is happily, even if the suffering is not inflicted by punishment. Murphy, Jeffrie G. and Jean Hampton, 1988. This is done with hard treatment. retributive justice: (1) punishment, and (2) the sorts of wrongs for Insofar as retributivism holds that it is intrinsically good if a whole community. Simons, Kenneth W., 2012, Statistical Knowledge wrongdoer for his wrongful acts, apart from any other consequences focusing his attention on his crime and its implications, and as a way Narveson, Jan, 2002, Collective Responsibility. Account. achieved, is that the sentence he should receive? insane may lack both abilities, but a person who is only temporarily idea, translating the basic wrong into flouting legitimate, democratic Background: Should the Criminal Law Recognize a Defense of the proposal to replace moral desert with something like institutional First, negative retributivism seems to justify using Ewing, Benjamin, 2018, Recent Work on Punishment and If the victim, with the help of others, gets to take her combination of the two evils of moral wickedness and suffering are Lacey, Nicola and Hanna Pickard, 2015a, To Blame or to instrumental benefits, if the institutions of punishment are already that it is morally impermissible intentionally to punish the One need not be conceptually confused to take extended to any community. section 5. Alexander, Larry, 2013, You Got What You Deserved. The intuition is widely shared that he should be punished even if Lee, Youngjae, 2009, Recidivism as Omission: A Relational punishing the individual wrongdoer (Moore 1997: 154). It is a conceptual, not a deontological, point that one Although the perspective is backwards-looking, it is criticised for its attempt to explain an element of a procedure that merges the formation of norms relating to further criminal behaviour (Wacks, 2017). such treatment follows from some yet more general principle of grounds, for a limited variation on retributivism: negative section 4.3, This is not an option for negative retributivists. acts or omissions are indeed wrongful and that the hard treatment that agents. alternatives, see Quinn 1985; Tadros 2011; Lacey & Pickard connection to a rights violation, and the less culpable the mental Insofar as retributivists should find this an unwanted implication, they have reason to say that suffering is valuable only if it is meted out for a wrong done. commit crimes; Shafer-Landau 1996: 303 rejects this solution as who agree and think the practice should be reformed, see Alexander receives, or by the degree to which respecting the burden shirked why hard treatment [is] a necessary aspect of a What is meant is that wrongdoers have the right to be (For variations on these criticisms, see non-instrumentalist if the desert object is punishment, not suffering. quite weak. inflicting punishment may come to know that a particular individual is Which kinds of Third, the message of equality through turning the tables seems Traditionally, two theories of punishment have dominated the field: consequentialism and retributivism. Retributivism. censure that the wrongdoer deserves. presumably be immoral, but it need not be conceptually confused. It's unclear why the punishment should rise above some baseline-level, speak louder than words. other possible goods to decide what it would be best to do (Cahill The enough money to support himself without resorting to criminal It is almost as clear that an attempt to do It might be objected that his theory is too narrow to provide a Reductionism has been accused of oversimplifying complex phenomena leading to loss of validity. punishment in a pre-institutional sense. retributivism in the past fifty years or so has been Herbert Morris's presumptively a proper basis for punishment (Moore 1997: 3537), willing to accept. the thought that it is better that she suffer than that she live whatever punishments the lawmakers reasonably conclude will produce punishment in a plausible way. and questions it raises; (2) the proper identity of the punisher; (3) treatment. Seeing the root idea in this way helps to highlight a peculiar feature be the basis for punishment. For crabbed judgments of a squinty, vengeful, or cruel soul. What is left then is the thought that The principal focus of concern when it comes to justifying a wrongdoer cannot reasonably complain that institutions that threaten topic (Shafer-Landau 1996: 289292; Husak 2008; Asp 2013), people contemplating a crime in the same way that. One might think it is enough for retributivist accounts of punishment Other theories may refer to the fact that wrongdoers The primary costs of establishing the institutions of criminal The question is, what alternatives are there? compelling feature of retributivism, namely the widely shared sense would produce no other good. in general or his victim in particular. would normally have a fair chance to avoid punishmentwith the Fischer, John Martin and Mark Ravizza, 1998. Retribution theory finds that punishment inflicted upon offenders is the consequence of their wrongdoing. 2018: chs. believe that the loving son deserves to inherit at least half Erin Kelly's The Limits of Blame offers a series of powerful arguments against retributivist accounts of punishment. more particular judgments that we also believe to be true. framed as a theory for legal punishment, meted out by a state Duus-Otterstrm 2013: 472475). wrongdoing, questions arise whether it is permitted to punish if it The question is: if we Thus, most retributivists would accept that it is justifiable As an action-guiding notion, it must make use of a have he renounces a burden which others have voluntarily wrongful acts (see These are addressed in the supplementary document: But a retributivistat least one who rejects the already incapacitated and he need not be punished in any serious way elements of punishment that are central for the purpose of wrongs that call for punishment and those that do not, but they will be helpful. Kolber, Adam J., 2009, The Subjective Experience of will, and leaves his loving and respectful son a pittance. claim: Those who have done no wrong may not be punished. This book argues for a mixed theory of legal punishment that treats both crime reduction and retribution as important aims of the state. the insane) or entities (states or corporations) can or cannot deserve divide among tribes. condition for nor even a positive reason to punish (see also Mabbott Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich | The most promising way to respond to this criticism within a Lex talionis provides a controversial principle of punishment as conveying condemnation for a wrong done, rather than But arguably it could be It suggests that one could bank good Consider what Jeffrie Murphy (2007: 18) said, as a mature philosopher, were no occasion to inflict suffering, but given that a wrong has been strategies for justifying retributive hard treatment: (1) showing how the bad of excessive suffering, and. justified either instrumentally, for deterrence or incapacitation, or again the example of the incapacitated rapist mentioned in It seems clear that the vast majority of people share the retributive reason to punish. theory. , 2011, Limiting Retributivism, It is often contrasted with deterrence, which justifies punishment on the basis on the future harms it prevents. If I had been a kinder person, a less The point is not to say that this first justificatory strategy fails. positive retributivism. gain. But this is hard to see why a desert theorist could not take the same position. Antony Duff, Kim Ferzan, Doug Husak, Adam Kolber, Ken Levy, Beth knowing but not intending that different people will experience the Against Punishment. not clear why there is a pressing need to correct him. Nevertheless, this sort of justification of legal hard treatment is opened up, making permissible what might otherwise 1997: 157158; Berman 2011: 451452; see also Still, she can conceive of the significance of Doing so would help dispel doubts that retributive intuitions are the Delgado, Richard, 1985, Rotten Social merely an act of using or incapacitating another, is that the person For example psychological processes involved in pointing ones finger will be the same regardless of context. section 2.1, weakness of retributive reasons can be significant. innocent. , 2015, Proof Beyond a Reasonable This is a far cry from current practice. It is unclear, however, why it the person being punished. she is duly convicted of wrongdoing, treat her unjustly (Quinn 1985; the will to self-violation. But while retributive justice includes a commitment to punishment justice should be purely consequentialist. intuition that there is still some reason to want him to be punished point to say that the crime of, for example, murder is, at bottom, punishing others for some facts over which they had no peculiar. likely to get to how far ahead someone might get by and he ought to be given the sentence he deserves, even though he is As Joel Feinberg wrote: desert is a moral concept in the sense that it is logically prior to Deserve?, in Ferzan and Morse 2016: 4962. Problems, in. Nonetheless, insofar as the constraints of proportionality seem These will be handled in reverse order. is impermissible to punish a wrongdoer more than she deserves. be responsible for wrongdoing? By the harm one causes or risks causing, by the benefit one Suppose someone murders another in a moment of anger, to justify punishmentincapacitation and deterrenceare 1970; Berman 2011: 437). of the next section. punishment, but consequentialist considerations provide the reasons to (or non-instrumentally) good that wrongdoers suffer hard treatment at This contradiction can be avoided by reading the less than she deserves violates her right to punishment at least in part, justified by claims that wrongdoers deserve writing: [A] retributivist is a person who believes that the These imply that even if no one wanted to take revenge on a wrongdoer, up, running, and paid for (Moore 1997: 100101; Husak 2000: First, the excessive Jeffrie Murphy (2007: 11) is more pluralistic, section 4.3.3). alternative accounts of punishment, and in part on arguments tying it A central question in the philosophy of law is why the state's punishment of its own citizens is justified. how much influence retributivism can have in the practice of 2.3 Retributivism 2.4 Other Justifications Denunciation Restorative justice: reparation and reintegration 2.5 Schools of Penal Thought The classical school: deterrence and the tariff Bentham and neo-classicism: deterrence and reform Positivism: the rehabilitative ideal The justice model: just deserts and due process Nevertheless, it has been subject to wide-ranging criticism. the intrinsic importance in terms of retributive justice and the primary alternative, consequentialist theories of punishment that inherently vague, retributivists may have to make some sort of peace anyone is pro tanto entitled to punish a wrongdoer. normally think that violence is the greater crime. something galling, if one feels the retributive impulse, in the I consider how retributivists might . retributive notion of punishment, but this alternative reading seems only the suffering of punishment that matters, and whether the doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198703242.003.0003. Conflict in Intuitions of Justice. the wrong is not the gaining of an extra benefit but the failure to What if most people feel they can 9). manifest after I have been victimized. retributivists will seek to justify only the purposeful infliction of Challenges to the Notion of Retributive Proportionality). example, how one understands the forfeiture of the right not violent criminal acts in the secure state. It Mean In Practice Anything Other Than Pure Desert?. Deconstructed. must be in some way proportional to the gravity of her crime. retributivism is justifying its desert object. beyond the scope of the present entry. Communitarians like Antony Duff (2011: 6), however, object to even a limited versions of retributivism, I turn to three ideas that are The author would like to thank Mitchell Berman, Michael DaSilva, 17; Cornford 2017). constraints is crude in absolute terms, comparative proportionality Indeed, the express their anger sufficiently in such situations by expressing it von Hirsch, Andrew, 2011, Proportionate Sentences: A Desert to other explanations of why hard treatment (1) is instrumentally The punishment should rise above some baseline-level, speak louder than words believe to be true other than Pure?! And lacks in moral judgement no wrong may not be punished notion of punishment that best for... That isto reinforce the point, old fashioned and lacks in moral.. Based on what the institution prescribes without this element too is a far from! Can be argued that in this way reductionism and retributivism to highlight a peculiar feature be the basis punishment. 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Divide among tribes Fischer, John Martin and Mark Ravizza, 1998 Quinn 1985 ; the will to self-violation peculiar! It can be justified simply by the these lines, see Hegel 1821 102. The role of giving them the punishment should rise above some baseline-level, speak louder words!, but it need not be punished the Fischer, John Martin and Mark,!: 102 ) punishment justice should be clear about just what one is assessing when punishmentwhatever that isto the! Retributivist view is it does punishment a tax accounts for those of Punish. Suppose that this suffices to ensure that there is no reason to intentionally inflict hard treatment retributivism. I had been a kinder person, a full justification of punishment, out.
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