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In the present research, we examine the effect of dehumanizing framing of ex-perpetrators of violence on participants' attributions of their agency, punishment deservingness, and suitableness for resocialization in postconflict. For this purpose, we collected data in the aftermath of a peace agreement between the government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) guerrilla in Colombia. In two studies, using within- (Study 1) and between- (Study 2) subjects experimental designs (N = 223), participants read manipulated news articles describing the capture of a fictional FARC guerrilla member. They were exposed (Study 1) and randomly assigned (Study 2) to a "humanizing frame" condition, where the ex-perpetrator was described emphasizing human traits (e.g., his identity, affective and mental states) and to a "dehumanizing frame" condition, where these traits were omitted, and the ex-perpetrator was generically nominated with terms such as terrorist or bandit. Across conditions, we measured participants' attributions of perpetrators' human agency, blame, punishment deservingness, as well as participants' resocialization expectations, and social distance toward the character. Results indicate that compared to the humanizing frame condition, in the dehumanizing frame condition, participants significantly attribute less agency to the perpetrator, endorse more severe retributive judgments, show more negative attitudes toward his resocialization, and express greater social distance. We discuss the implications of these findings for the disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration process of ex-perpetrators in postconflict societies. Public Significance Statement: The present research suggests that when ex-perpetrators of violence in a postconflict setting are depicted in the news media using dehumanizing language, people attribute them with less human agency, more severe punishments, and perceive them as more socially distant and less suitable for resocialization. These results highlight the subtle ways in which the use of language in the media can affect forgiveness and reconciliation after a peace agreement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores the relationship between justice and moral accountability in criminal law. It argues that the current punitive approach in the United States fails to consider ethical factors that mitigate individual accountability for criminal wrongdoing. The article suggests a restorative practice of accountability that could alleviate tensions between the political and moral aspects of criminal law. It also discusses the role of punishment in upholding rights-protecting rules and emphasizes the importance of considering the impact of social and natural contingencies on criminal behavior. The article concludes by advocating for a reorganization of the practice of punishment to promote social reintegration and democratic equality. [Extracted from the article]

This article concerns the problem of eternal hell in Islam as an aporetic problem of evil with a focus on Aijaz's description of the Islamic soteriology. I contest his description of Islamic culpability and his claim that all non-Muslims are regarded as kâfir and consigned to eternal hell. First, I aim to illustrate the pitfalls in his line of argumentation such as crude generalizations and selective reading of the Islamic sources, which seem to render his argument a strawman fallacy. I offer a more accurate analysis of the Islamic view, by arguing that only a limited group of people who fight against truth through evil actions are considered as kâfir. Second, building on my analysis of the notion of kâfir , I address the question whether God's perfect love and wisdom are compatible with limited salvific exclusivism. Thus, I aim to elaborate on the rationale behind the prescription of eternal punishment for the kâfir in the Quran in the rest of the article, by arguing that the kâfir is incapable of genuine repentance due to his character formed by his free choices. This, in turn, makes it impossible to achieve retributive justice through a finite punishment concerning the kâfir 's evil actions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Punishment may increase human performance and decrease error. • Feedback positively affects human performance and error. • An absence of these stimuli may decrease performance. Introduction: Understanding the consequences of non-punitive sanctions and feedback for nonintentional deviations (i.e., errors) is important to effective safety policy. This study aims to address a lack of research on the effects of punishment and feedback on correcting erroneous behavior in the context of multitasking. Method: A Multi-Attribute Task Battery (MATB-II) was employed to simulate the demands of aviating, an important area of applied safety. Sixty participants were randomly assigned to one of four experimental groups (no intervention, punishment, feedback, punishment + feedback) and asked to perform the MATB-II. Punishment, feedback, and punishment + feedback decreased error and increased performance, with punishment alone having the greatest effect. Results: The results highlight the need for behavioral consequences or feedback to reduce erroneous behavior. Practical Applications: From an applied perspective, these results have implications for policy and training. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Four experiments used trust games to investigate schadenfreude's effects on attitudes and behavior towards third parties who punish prior violations of participants' trust. Across all studies, schadenfreude was stronger when trust violators received negative rather than positive outcomes, and participants' perceptions that the violator deserved punishment positively predicted levels of schadenfreude. Further, participants had less favorable attitudes towards third parties who delivered more negative outcomes (Experiment 1), but attitudes and behavior were relatively more favorable when these negative outcomes were inflicted on trust violators (Experiment 2). Participants also had more favorable attitudes and behavior towards third parties who delivered punitive outcomes which did not themselves involve trust violations. Further, results were consistent with a statistical model where just world beliefs, deservingness, and schadenfreude serially mediated the effect of punishment on attitudes towards third-party punishers (Experiment 3). These results were replicated in the pre-registered Experiment 4 using a larger sample and more focused measures. Taken together, our findings are consistent with the view that schadenfreude following trust violations serves the social function of aligning relations with agents who administer retributive justice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The text summarizes the 58th Colloquium of the Southwestern German and Swiss Criminological Institutes and Chairs, which took place in Augsburg from July 6th to July 8th, 2023. The conference covered a range of topics related to criminology and criminal justice, including right-wing music and aggression, antisemitism in Augsburg, femicides and gender construction, police accountability, lay judges in plea agreements, and disruptive defense lawyers in court. The conference provided valuable insights into these specific areas of research. The text also briefly mentions presentations on organized crime, criminal law, punishment theories, online journalism, retributive justice, and prisoner resocialization. The conference served as a platform for researchers to share their work and engage in meaningful discussions. The article does not provide specific details about the topics discussed or the outcomes of the conference. [Extracted from the article]

In this article, I argue that Michael Moore's (1997), and other similar formulations of desert retributivism – viz., the theory that holds punishment to be justified because of the deserved suffering it imposes on guilty offenders – are epistemically problematic. The argument draws on John Dewey's inchoate critique of retribution, and on Dewey's more general contention that the justification of ethical judgments and principles proceeds ex post – viz., that it depends on the experiences elicited by acting on those judgments and principles. Based on Dewey's ex post take on justification, I more specifically argue that, given its commitment to moral naturalism and to coherentism, Moore's version of desert retributivism is epistemically unwarranted. This is because we have evidentially grounded reasons to think that many of the retributive judgments that underlie the principle of retributive justice are not clearly supported ex post in the relevant, desert retributivist sense. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

William Lane Craig insists that I am wrong in reducing God's moral goodness to his beneficent aim of drawing all people to himself. For Craig, God's moral goodness, best conceived in terms of righteousness, must also include God's retributive justice toward the wicked, who deserve the punishment they receive. My response is that Craig's argument rests on two assumptions about value, neither of which, I argue, Christian theists have good reason to affirm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fines, corporal punishments, and other procedures of punitive justice recur across small-scale societies. Although they are often assumed to enforce group norms, we here propose the relation-restoration hypothesis of punitive justice, according to which punitive procedures function to restore dyadic cooperation and curtail conflict between offender and victim following violations of reciprocal obligations. We test this hypothesis's predictions using observations of justice systems in three small-scale societies. We code ethnographic reports of 97 transgressions among Kiowa equestrian foragers (North America); analyze a sample of 302 transgressions among Mentawai horticulturalists (Indonesia); and review retributive procedures documented among Nuer pastoralists (South Sudan). Consistent with the relation-restoration hypothesis, we find that third-party punishment is rare; that most third-party involvement aims at resolving conflicts; that costs paid by offenders serve to achieve forgiveness by repairing victims; that punitive justice is accompanied by ceremonial procedures aimed at limiting conflict and restoring goodwill; and that failures to impose costs contribute to a decline in reciprocal cooperation. Although we document rare instances of third-party punishment among the Kiowa (6.6% of offenses), punitive justice more often serves as restorative justice, appeasing victims' urge for revenge while not overly harming offenders' interests to ensure reconciliation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I assess the force of a justification for post-conflict amnesties that is aimed at overcoming the most common objection to their conferral: that they entail retributive injustice. According to this justification, retributivists ought to consider amnesties to be justified because they are analogous to plea bargains, and because retributivists need not consider plea bargains to be unacceptable. I argue with reference to the 2001 Timor-Leste immunity scheme that amnesties conditional upon perpetrators' not only admitting guilt and confessing but also making reparations may count as plea bargains. I show that plea bargains providing sentence discounts in return for guilty pleas, allowing offenders who accept these bargains to be punished in the absence of trials, and plea bargains offering leniency in punishment in exchange for offenders pleading guilty and providing testimony or other incriminating evidence against superiors or accomplices, may be consonant with versions of retributivism that allow less than the full measure of an offender's deserved punishment to be exacted where necessary to maximise or expand deserved punishment overall. I argue that amnesties that are also plea bargains may be considered justified by plea bargain-defending retributivists. So too may amnesties conferred in exchange for perpetrators' admitting guilt and providing incriminating testimony or other evidence against their superiors and accomplices, some of which count as plea bargains, since they too could in some cases maximise or expand deserved punishment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current management literature suggests that when employees engage in wrongdoing, managers typically respond with punishment. The emerging moral repair literature suggests an alternative to punishment: a reparative response that focuses on repairing harm and restoring damaged relationships. However, little is currently known about restorative managerial responses, including why managers respond to employee wrongdoing in a reparative versus punitive manner. The purpose of this paper is to examine a variety of cognitive and emotional influences on this managerial decision. This study used a scenario-based survey methodology. The authors gathered data from 894 managers in sales and financial services contexts to test a set of hypotheses regarding individual-level influences on managers' punitive versus restorative responses. This study found that managers' restorative justice orientation, retributive justice orientation, social considerations (e.g. when employees are relatively interdependent versus independent), instrumental considerations (e.g. when the offender is highly valuable to the organization) and feelings of anger influenced their reparative versus punitive responses. Data are cross-sectional, so causality inferences should be approached with caution. Another potential limitation is common method bias due to single-source and single-wave data. The findings of this study show that managers often opt for a restorative response to workplace transgressions, and this study surfaces a variety of reasons why managers choose a restorative response instead of a punitive response. This study focuses on social order and expectations within the workplace. This is important to victims, offenders, observers, managers and other stakeholders. This study seeks to emphasize the importance of social factors, a shared social identity, social bonds and other relationships within this manuscript. This is an important component of organizational-focused restorative justice research. This is the first study, to the best of the authors' knowledge, to explicitly test individual-level influences on managers' reparative versus punitive responses to employee wrongdoing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Classic theories of punishment have been deeply criticized for their failure to attribute significance to victims and the fact of their victimization within their proposed frameworks for the justification and distribution of punishment. Retributive theory, in particular, has been criticized for its failure to recognize the significance of victims. Some theorists have been led by this lacuna to adopt a victim-centred approach to punishment as a solution to the 'absence-of-victim' problem. Per victim-centred approaches, the very justification and imposition of punishment rely on victims and the restoration of egalitarian relations between the offender and victim that were disturbed by crime. This move toward constructing criminal law and punishment in terms of victim recognition and vindication has become increasingly popular and has been endorsed by a number of prominent theorists, yet it raises important worries. This article proposes an alternative solution, embracing the insight that victims ought to matter to the punishment of those who offend against them, yet without constructing the edifice of criminal law and punishment on the function of victim vindication. It offers an account of the way in which the introduction of a victim changes the balance of reasons in favour of punishment, becoming important to the determination of whether or not punishment ought to be imposed (in full). Yet it does so without taking the 'victim's turn' – that is, without reconstructing the institution of criminal punishment entirely in victim-centric terms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Annals of Philosophy / Roczniki Filozoficzne is the property of John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin, Faculty of Philosophy and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Sakarya University Journal of Law Faculty (SHD) is the property of Sakarya University Journal of Law Faculty (SHD) and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The rapid growth of restorative justice (RJ) has brought myths into the literature. K. Daly's "Restorative Justice: The Real Story" (Punishment and Society 4(1), 55–79, 2002) is among the most important demythologization attempts in the literature. This article revisits the four myths that were discussed in this seminal article: (1) RJ is an oppositional concept to retributive justice; (2) RJ is rooted in Indigenous justice and the past dominant form of justice; (3) RJ is a care response as opposed to a justice response; and (4) RJ has the potential to transform people. This article first examines whether these four myths remain pervasive in the post-2002 RJ literature. Reviewing the post-2002 literature suggests that demythologization has almost taken place. The article then seeks to highlight theoretical gaps in the post-2002 RJ. Corresponding to the four myths identified, it offers four areas of RJ that warrant further debate and research: (1) institutionalization of RJ, (2) decolonization of RJ, (3) the role of masculinity in RJ, and (4) how RJ works. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I analyze the relationship between the retributive and the preventive function of punishment, within the frame of Kant's juridical theory. Despite Kant's explicit rejection of the preventive function in his brief discussion on Criminal Law, his observations regarding right and coercion allow to establish an acknowledgement of the preventive function. In my discussion of this topic, I will consider some methodological, juridical and moral premises which influence Kant's emphasis on the retributive principle. I will also consider the relationship between both function (retributive and preventive) of punishment, within the frame of his brief treatment of Criminal Law. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Nuevo Foro Penal is the property of Universidad EAFIT and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Revista Foco (Interdisciplinary Studies Journal) is the property of Revista Foco and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The essay explores the presence of law and government in Arda, also known as Earth in the book "Lord of the Rings," by English writer J. R. R. Tolkien, in which all peoples of Middle-earth and of Valinor lived. Topics covered include the powers of kings and the role of kings as lawmakers in Arda, the executive role of rulers in Middle-earth and their activity as legislators, and the rules of succession to the throne in Arda.

Copyright of Intersecoes: Revista de Estudios Interdisciplinares is the property of Editora da Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro (EdUERJ) and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper takes as its point of departure the newly resurgent controversy about whether the possible civic or pedagogical functions of true-crime documentaries outweigh the harm they are occasionally known to inflict. Although supporters of true-crime documentaries tend to downplay their potential to create or exacerbate trauma, their arguments, like those of the subgenre's critics, presuppose that trauma functions as an unwanted byproduct. This paper maintains that while this assumption buttresses belief in a shared moral universe of what qualifies as the just administration of law or authority it also conceals the dual possibility: (1) that the design of certain true-crime documentaries constitute an exercise of extra-juridical punitive power; and (2) that viewers are capable of deriving pleasure from such an exercise. To that end, the paper examines three recent, critically acclaimed true-crime documentaries— The Thin Blue Line, Tickled, and The Act of Killing —identifying in each a specific form of technologically enabled retribution: interrogation, surveillance, and torture, respectively. It argues that insofar as the films succeed as entertainments and elicit pleasure from audiences, they engender and maintain subjective adherence to extra-juridical practices of retributive justice, at both a cognitive and affective level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Retributivism is one of the most prevalent theories in contemporary penal theory. However, despite its popularity it is frequently argued that too little attention has been paid to the implications of retributivism for prison management and prison life, including prison visits and furlough. More so, it has been questioned both whether the various forms of retributivism found in the philosophical literature on criminal punishment have anything to say about what prison life ought to be like and whether they are able to criticize deeply contested rules and practices, such as those that deny inmates contact with family-members for the sake of prison discipline. In this paper, we argue that prison visits and furlough have a crucial role in a prison system based on retributivist principles. In particular, we argue that the communicative theory of punishment has important theoretical resources for proving a strong and compelling rationale for both furlough and visitation on retributivist grounds. Besides exploring this rationale, we also discuss the practical implications of this view for the penal policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates the politics of holding bank executives accountable for banking crises. The post-2008 financial crisis was characterized by a significant variation in the endorsement of retributive justice. While some countries established special prosecutorial bodies and facilitated prosecutions, others relied on the existing prosecutorial mechanisms to seek out wrongdoing. The comparative experience of Iceland and Cyprus shows that the unfolding of the crisis shapes the appetite of politicians for retributive justice. With a banking collapse, politicians will be most proactive, as voters' demand for justice is high and the risks for the banking industry are minimal. With a severe yet negotiated crisis following a bailout/bail-in, politicians are more reluctant to endorse policies that may risk the recovery of the fragile banking sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In an era when authoritarian governments increasingly target academics, Turkey's 2016 purge of more than 6,000 academics and their diminution to civic death is conspicuous in its cruelty. Although unprecedented, this is not the first time that Turkish academics have been punished en masse. By looking at the tools with which academics have been expelled from educational institutions, the public sphere, and the political body, I attempt to develop a nuanced understanding of the interconnected forms of punishment directed towards academic citizens as knowledge producers. I suggest that the 1980 coup accomplished three things: it introduced new mechanisms of punishment based on a logic of retribution instead of compensation; it changed the legal system into a regime of exception; it transformed academics into patriotic worker-citizens. The latest purges have brought an additional change in the status of academics' citizenship, rendering them as disposable citizens forever at risk of being targeted as the 'civic dead'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current criminal justice moment is ripe for discussion of first principles. What the criminal law is, what it should do, and why society punishes is as relevant as ever as communities reconsider the reach of the criminal law and forms of punishment like incarceration. One theory recently put forth--reconstructivism--purports to offer a descriptive and normative theory of the criminal law and punishment while critiquing the ills of the American system. It comprehends the criminal law and punishment as functional endeavors, with the particular goal of restitching or "reconstructing" the social fabric that crime disrupts. In particular, reconstructivism is a social theory of the criminal law, prioritizing solidarity rather than a moral conception of the common good. Drawing from a line of thinkers, from Aristotle to Hegel to Durkheim, reconstructivism claims to be distinctive and uniquely equipped to explain what the criminal law is and what it should do, as opposed to retributivist or utilitarian based theories. It claims to more richly account for the social effects of punishment that plague the current system, unlike duty-based theories of retribution and the cold instrumentality underlying utilitarian-based punishment that has made criminal justice impersonal and shortsighted. This Article critiques reconstructivism's core claims and presents an alternative theory of punishment that contains insights for the current moment. While reconstructivism critiques the failures of common punishment theories to account for the social nature and effects of punishment, it fails to account for forms of retributivism that are not deontological. In particular, teleological retributivism, or more simply phrased, "restorative retributivism," already contains the descriptively and normatively restorative elements present in reconstructivism. Its conception of the common good rests on the inherently social nature of human affairs and accounts for the solidarity prioritized by reconstructivism. Whereas the reconstructivist prioritizes the socially and culturally constituted, the restorative retributivist seeks to emphasize shared moral intuitions, which social realities inform, but not to the exclusion of other considerations. This distinction has implications for how each theory might critique modern criminal law and punishment. For example, restorative retributivism would view the expansion of the criminal law--both in terms of substance and administration--skeptically, and the modern approach to punishment--both in theory and its carceral form--as contrary to human dignity and too focused on controlling risk rather than promoting individual and social flourishing. This critique, like reconstructivism, has much to offer in the era of the carceral state and can help to reorient punishment to the broader good. It shifts the focus away from control and risk management to dignity and flourishing, leaving room for community involvement, humility in judging, and de-criminalization. In sum, reconstructivism and restorative retributivism are relatives, and both helpfully emphasize the social implications and consequences of the criminal law and punishment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the theory of corporate criminal liability and the application of criminal law to corporations. Also cited are the issue of whether corporations can be retributively punished, the retributive justification for punishment, the mainstream retributivist theory, and the corporate prosecution program of the U.S.

It is natural to wonder how mercy is related to justice. I focus in this essay on a more limited question: how should we relate mercy and retributive justice? My suggestion is that attending to our situation as moral agents can help us solve this conundrum. I offer a pessimistic reading of our situation. Because of original sin and related forms of bad moral luck, we have limited control over our attitudes and actions. This has a surprisingly hopeful upshot, since our unfortunate condition makes it appropriate to respond to one another mercifully. I suggest that this response can take two forms. Without collapsing justice into mercy, it is right to make our approach to justice and punishment more merciful and to recognize the fittingness of "erring" on the side of mercy when we are uncertain how to apportion blame. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What reaction stops revenge taking? Four experiments (total N = 191) examined this question where the victim of an interpersonal transgression could observe the offender's reaction (anger, sadness, pain, or calm) to a retributive noise punishment. We compared the punishment intensity selected by the participant before and after seeing the offender's reaction. Seeing the opponent in pain reduced subsequent punishment most strongly, while displays of sadness and verbal indications of suffering had no appeasing effect. Expression of anger about a retributive punishment did not increase revenge seeking relative to a calm reaction, even when the anger response was disambiguated as being angry with the punisher. It is concluded that the expression of pain is the most effective emotional display for the reduction of retaliatory aggression. The findings are discussed in light of recent research on reactive aggression and retributive justice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the potential effects of a retributive and restorative systems of justice on society in Trinidad and Tobago by analyzing their literary representations in the book "The Whole Armour" by Wilson Harris. Other topics include the possible effect of vengeance as criminal punishment in society's psychological and emotional response to wrongdoing, and the potential pros and cons of restorative justice theory and retributive justice theory.

Individuals high in socioeconomic status (SES) are often viewed as valuable members of society. However, the appeal of high-SES people exists in tension with our aversion to inequity. Little experimental work has directly examined how people rectify inequitable distributions between two individuals varying in SES. The objective of the present study was to examine how disinterested third parties adjudicate inequity in the context of concrete financial allocations between a selfish allocator and a recipient who was the victim of the allocator's selfish offer. Specifically, this study focused on whether knowing the SES of the victim or the allocator affected the participant's decisions to punish the selfish allocator. In two experiments (N = 999), participants completed a modified third-party Ultimatum Game in which they arbitrated inequitable exchanges between an allocator and a recipient. Although participants generally preferred to redistribute inequitable exchanges without punishing players who made unfair allocations, we observed an increased preference for punitive solutions as offers became increasingly selfish. This tendency was especially pronounced when the victim was low in SES or when the perpetrator was high in SES, suggesting a tendency to favor the disadvantaged even among participants reporting high subjective SES. Finally, punitive responses were especially likely when the context emphasized the allocator's privileged status rather than the recipient's underprivileged status. These findings inform our understanding of how SES biases retributive justice even in non-judicial contexts that minimize the salience of punishment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The corpus of law texts surviving from tenth-century England reveals a society that sought to maintain public order without anything resembling a police force. Rather than envisioning order as the product of state coercion, the kingdom's upper-elite legislators understood society to attend to its own ordering on a local scale through a mix of individual action and communal self-regulation. This tenth-century idealized legal order is unlikely to hold much appeal today; it combined alarmingly libertarian assumptions about the legitimacy of lethal male violence with a harshly punitive communitarian approach to theft, involving both routinized execution and theft-prevention measures that intruded heavily on the lives of the ordinary people. Yet there is much to suggest that this vision of order was rarely realized, and that communal control meant this culture's cruel fantasies of retributive justice often ended up yielding in the face of the more humane sentiments embedded in local interpersonal networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Michael S. Moore is among the most prominent normative theorists to argue that retributive justice, understood as the deserved suffering of offenders, justifies punishment. Moore claims that the principle of retributive justice is pervasively supported by our judgments of justice and sufficient to ground punishment. We offer an experimental assessment of these two claims, (1) the pervasiveness claim, according to which people are widely prone to endorse retributive judgments, and (2) the sufficiency claim, according to which no non-retributive principle is necessary for justifying punishment. We test these two claims in a survey and a related survey experiment in which we present participants (N = ~900) with the stylized description of a criminal case. Our results seem to invalidate claim (1) and provide mixed results concerning claim (2). We conclude that retributive justice theories which advance either of these two claims need to reassess their evidential support. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the proportionality of JEP's own sanctions, in order to demonstrate these sanctions do not break the duty of investigate, judge and punish of responsible by serious violations of human rights and international humanitarian law. In first place, I analyze the limits and scope of that duty, with special reference of Rome's Statute. In second place, I study the objectives of punishment in transitional justice. By last, I review the proportionality of own sanctions for to set up that there is a compensatory balance between low interference of retributive dimension of justice, high protection of peace right and medium safeguard of victims' rights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Some retributivists claim that when we punish wrongdoers we achieve a good: justice. The paper argues that the idea of justice, though rhetorically freighted with positive value, contains only a small core of universally agreed meaning; and its development in a variety of competing conceptions simply recapitulates, without resolving, debates within the theory of punishment. If, to break this deadlock, we stipulate an expressly retributivist conception of justice, then we should concede that punishment which is just (in the stipulated sense) may be morally wrong. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the literature on moral responsibility. It examines effective ways of communicating arguments about free will skepticism to policy- makers, as, they argue, policies based on free will skepticism could be beneficial for society. It also mentions that we should abandon retributivism, which posits that offenders deserve to be punished.

Many people have the intuition that the failure to impose punishment on perpetrators of such serious human rights violations as murder, torture and rape that occurred in the course of violent conflict preceding a society's transition from authoritarianism to democracy amounts to an injustice. This intuition is to an appreciable extent accounted for by the retributivist outlook of a high proportion of those who share it. Colleen Murphy, however, though she accepts that retributivism may justify punishment of offenders in stable democracies, claims in her recent book on transitional justice that retributivism is inapplicable in the circumstances of transitional justice. I argue that the four arguments she provides in support of this claim are unsuccessful and that retributivism, assuming it to be a tenable rationale for punishment, justifies the subjection of perpetrators of at least some serious human rights abuses to sanctions in at least some transitional societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The "small improvement problem" ("the Problem") applies when no option in a comparison is best nor, it seems, are the options equal, because a small improvement to one would fail to make it the better choice. I argue that vagueness causes the Problem, such that the options are vaguely equal or vaguely "related." I then unpack an important instance of the Problem, the comparison between a crime and a punishment upon which the ideal of a retributively deserved sentence is based. I argue that this comparison is not only vague, but remarkably vague, leading to an expansive array of "not undeserved" sentences. I conclude, however, that retributivism can only justify the least harmful "not undeserved" sentence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many philosophers think that, when someone deserves something, it's intrinsically good that she get it or there's a non-instrumental reason to give it to her. Retributivists who try to justify punishment by appealing to claims about what people deserve typically assume this view or views that entail it. In this paper, I present evidence that many people have intuitions that are inconsistent with this view. And I argue that this poses a serious challenge to retributivist arguments that appeal to desert. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Criminal systems operate by altering the motivational mechanisms that explain individuals' behavior. To do that, the sanctioning device seems to play a major role. According to a standardly utilitarian assumption, an increment in sanction efficacy is usually followed by a proportional increment in normative compliance. In the present paper, however, I will try to show not only that the correlation between these two factors is more complex than the assumption admits, but also that a deeper understanding of human motivations provides greater insight into some aspects of our criminal systems' justice and legitimacy that may have an impact on their moral justification. Arguing from a set of postulates that conceive our criminal systems as guaranteeing the preconditions of (deliberative) democracy, my ultimate aim will be to design a comprehensive evaluative model of the way they function grounded on the notion of consent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We have many good reasons to abolish life without parole sentences (LWOP, known in some countries as whole life sentences) and no good reasons not to. After reviewing the current state of LWOP sentences in the United States, I argue that the only rationale for punishment that can hope to justify them is retributivism. But even if retributivism is a sound principle, it in no way entails life without parole. One reason is that unless one believes, like Kant, that appropriate punishments must be carried out whatever the circumstances, we must acknowledge that other considerations are relevant to determining punishments. Furthermore, retributivism does not dictate particular punishments, and so the question remains which are reasonable and appropriate. Even retributivists, then, can reject life without parole. But showing why it's wrong requires a positive case for abolition as well. I offer several reasons. First, shortening and tempering sentences need not trivialize the gravity of the crimes to which they respond, as some suggest, because the expressive meaning of sentences is malleable. Second, most if not all people are not fully culpable for their criminal acts, and we should mitigate their punishment accordingly. Third, abolishing life without parole--and indeed all life sentences--is likely to bring many benefits: to prisoners, their loved ones, the community in general, and to those who decide for abolition and who carry it out. Among these is the promotion of certain attitudes it is good for people to have--what, following Ryan Preston-Roedder, I call faith in humanity. Finally, there's a certain pointlessness in continuing to punish a person who has undergone changes of character that distance him greatly from the person who committed the crime many decades earlier. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Thomas Nagel argues that the pervasive role that luck plays in conditioning behavior seems inconsistent with ordinary views about moral accountability and culpability. As many criminal justice practices seem to rely on these ordinary views, the pervasiveness of luck also seems inconsistent with the legitimacy of a number of criminal law practices. For example, the claim that people do not have direct control over the consequences of their acts and hence that the consequences of an act are conditioned by luck calls into question the legitimacy of the traditional practice of punishing unsuccessful attempts less severely than successful attempts; if the only difference between a successful and unsuccessful attempt is a matter of luck, then there can be no difference, other things being equal, in culpability between the two. In this Article, I argue that the pervasive role that luck plays in conditioning a person's acts calls into question the viability of retributivist justifications of punishment, which hold that punishment is justified insofar as deserved, for two reasons: First, a person is not culpable or deserving of punishment, according to ordinary views, for events beyond her control. But if the factors conditioning an agent's act are all matters of luck beyond the agent's control, then she is not deserving of punishment for the act. Second, the pervasiveness of luck in conditioning a person's acts creates insuperable problems with respect to making judgments of what is deserved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]