ABSTRACT

We have considered several theories of punishment that advance a specific goal. Retributivists believe punishment should be distributed to the deserving in proportion to what is deserved. Deterrence proponents believe that punishment should deter and rehabilitation proponents believe punishment should reform offenders. Restorative justice advocates believe that punishment should aim at restoring damaged relationships and without using prisons. Retributivism, deterrence, rehabilitation, and restorative justice offer general theories of punishment. This chapter will examine two important contributions by John Rawls

and Herbert Hart on how we might understand a mixed theory of punishment. They argue that punishment has a mixed justification that brings together two or more penal goals. The hybrid nature of mixed theories of punishment renders them distinctive to general theories of punishment. These theories are attempts to bridge general theories of punishment and harness their combined theoretical power. However attractive, mixed theories of punishment raise new problems that may lead us to question their serving as a plausible alternative to non-mixed theories. We will survey the contributions of Rawls and Hart to consider the potential prospects and problems that mixed theories present us, including the theory of negative retributivism.