ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the justification of incarceration as a method of punishment and possible alternatives to incarceration, these discussions cannot take place without thinking some about punishment generally, including the question of why we punish. There seem to be reasonable arguments to be made for justifying punishment by appealing both to backward-looking and forward-looking theories. Hybrid theories of punishment try to bring together aspects of more than one of these theories in ways that often appeal better to our commonsense intuitions. Although Immanuel Kant's account of punishment is not without some problems, understanding his position proves especially helpful in answering the question of why we punish and thinking through how we should go about punishing people in practice. In the history of philosophy, Kant offers what may be the most interesting hybrid theory of punishment. Kant's justification of punishment is rooted in his account of human freedom and the external conditions necessary for the possibility of that freedom.
