ABSTRACT
In no activity – except perhaps in waging war – does the state express its coercive nature so clearly as in the practice of punishment. For this reason it is central to the legitimacy of the state that punishment can be distinguished from arbitrary violence. In this chapter we explore whether this is possible: can the state justify the practice of punishment? And what exactly is punishment? As we will see the definition and justification of punishment are intertwined, such that it is not possible to define punishment in a way that does not presuppose a particular justification of it. Two theories dominate the debate over punishment – retributivism and consequentialism – and critics of consequentialism argue that under certain, admittedly very unusual circumstances, it is right to punish an innocent person. Retributivism, on the other hand, requires that only the guilty are punished.
