ABSTRACT
G. W. F. Hegel claims that punishment is justified because it annuls crimes, thereby revealing the criminal act for what it is—a will "null and void." This chapter outlines the essential assumptions of the Kantian retributive theory of punishment in order to set up that, despite the initial appeal of Kantian Retributivism, cases in which the criminal has been disadvantaged by social injustices raise irresolvable problems for this version of retributivism. It discusses that a problem with Kantian Retributivism is that it is unable to satisfactorily address cases in which the criminal suffers from Rotten Social Background (RSB). Like Kantian Retributivism, Annulment Retributivism endorses R1—the claim that persons are frees—and echoes the claim that any utilitarian theory of punishment is unjustifiable. Annulment Retributivism requires that punishment be painful—even in the face of the deterrence theorist's objection that the infliction of painful punishment is pointless because the criminal is incorrigible or because she is already guilt-ridden.
