ABSTRACT
Chapter 9, “In Defense of Criminology,” addresses a common criticism against consequentialism: that the social sciences are incapable of reliably guiding public policy because they are unable to isolate the relevant factors in assessing the relative effectiveness of different punishments. This chapter concludes that criminology provides adequate guidance for general deterrence and rehabilitation. At the most general level, there is every reason to believe that humans are influenced by incentives. More specifically, studies regarding the effectiveness of the severity, certainty, and celerity of punishment can guide the formulation and improvement of statutory penalties, and in ways that are more justified than the retributivist’s appeal to intuition. With regard to rehabilitation, critics of consequentialism have ignored recent advances in the field, which have informed more effective strategies such as rehabilitative rather than punitive treatment of drug offenses. Finally, a review of the different forms of retributivism reveals that all but the most extreme version of retributivism have some role for empirically based deterrence strategies.
