ABSTRACT

This chapter explores the promise of another theory of punishment which incorporates certain elements of the deterrence, retributivist, and rehabilitation views, but whose justification for punishment and whose formula for determining what punishment a wrongdoer deserves are distinctive and importantly different from the reasons and formulas characterizing the traditional rival theories. It focuses on the theory’s application to the state’s punishment of criminal offenders and looks at the theory’s implications for punishment within other societal institutions, most notably the family. The chapter shows that this theory is promising, and merits considerably more discussion and study by the larger intellectual community. Philosophers who write about punishment spend most of their time worrying about whether the state’s punishment of criminals is justifiable, so let us begin with that particular issue. Comparing punishments to electrical fences helps to make clear how a certain kind of deterrent message is built into the larger moral point which punishment aims to convey.