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The Moral Permissibility Of Punishment, Zachary Hoskins

All Theses and Dissertations (ETDs)

This dissertation offers an account of the moral permissibility of criminal punishment. Punishment presents a distinctive moral challenge in that it involves a community’s inflicting harm on individuals, treating them in ways that would typically be morally wrong. We can distinguish a number of different questions of punishment’s permissibility. This dissertation focuses on four central questions:: 1) Why may we punish? Why is it in principle permissible to inflict harm on criminal offenders?: 2) Why should we punish? Is there a compelling reason to do so?: 3) How may we punish? What principles should constrain impositions of punishment? And finally,: …