The justifications of punishment

Abstract

This chapter contains an overview of (a) the classical debate regarding the justification of punishment, (b) the main competing rationales that are opposed in that traditional debate, (c) the efforts to combine these different rationales. This overview allows us to see both what is attractive (and unattractive) about each of these rationales and why it is so hard to combine them. Additionally, the chapter offers novel reasons that stand in the way of successfully combining different rationales. Above all, the chapter explains how what different participants to this debate understand by "justification" is in fact different. Agreeing to a common sense of "justification" should contribute to making progress in the remarkably difficult enterprise of justifying punishment.