ABSTRACT
This chapter considers what an abolitionist about punishment who favors compulsory victim restitution as an alternative should say about the practice of incarceration. It deals by developing a definition of punishment and explaining why the case against punishment does not commit one to opposing compulsory victim restitution. The practice of punishment involves the state treating some of its citizens in ways that it would clearly be wrong to treat others. If it is a form of punishment, abolitionism about punishment straightforwardly entails abolitionism about compulsory victim restitution. Compulsory victim restitution involves the state's forcing an offender to compensate their victims for the harms that they are responsible for having wrongfully caused. A system of pure restitution without punishment would treat incarceration as a last resort, not as standard operating procedure. And so in this sense of abolitionism, an abolitionist about punishment who endorses compulsory victim restitution as an alternative to punishment can and should indeed be an abolitionist about incarceration.
