PHIL 251 Chapter 14: Criminal Justice and Legal Reparations as an Alternative to Punishment’
3 May 2016
School
Department
Course
Professor
Document Summary
Criminal justice and legal reparations as an alternative to punishment". Consider a just society, with reasonable laws, fairly enforced by an appropriate authority. Many have thought the right answer is: with punishment. In support of this answer, three sorts of justification for punishment are commonly offered. Some justifications appeal to the demands of justice and considerations of desert-to the criminal deserving punishment or to the victims or other members of society deserving state sanctioned retribution. Some justifications appeal instead to utility and especially to the prospect of deterrence to the thought that the threat of punishment, or punishment itself, will work to prevent crime. Finally, some appeal to punishment"s role in establishing, expressing, or affirming society"s commitment to the (frequently moral) judgments embodied in the law. Whatever the justification is supposed to be, a response to an offense or violation counts as punishment only if it involves the intentional infliction of pain (or other unpleasantness).
