ABSTRACT
Chapter 1, “Crimes and Burdens,” defends a version of the standard definition of punishment. It formulates the following definition, which is designed to cover both legal and non-legal punishments: Punishment is the imposition of burdens by a recognized authority because someone has violated a rule that was acknowledged or should have been acknowledged as a rule. Two objections are considered: one that would limit the definition to exclude mere penalties, and the other that would rule out the punishment of innocents by definition. Other philosophers propose definitions of punishment that are flexible, vague, or allow for exceptions. Instead, this chapter proposes variants of the standard definition with provisional qualities that illuminate the similarities and differences among the different proposed justifications of punishment. The chapter concludes by showing how the proposed definitions give us ways to focus evaluations of punishments, in order to identify which features of a given punishment make it justified or unjustified.
