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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
Play Fair With Recidivists, Richard Dagger
Play Fair With Recidivists, Richard Dagger
Political Science Faculty Publications
Retributivists thus face a difficult challenge. Either we must go against the social grain, and perhaps our own intuitions, by insisting that a criminal offense carry the same penalty or punishment no matter how many previous convictions an offender has accrued; or we must find a way to justify the recidivist premium. I shall take the second route here by arguing that recidivism itself is a kind of criminal offense. In developing this argument, I shall rely on Youngjae Lee's insightful analysis of "recidivism as omission." I shall complement his analysis, however, by grounding it in a conception of criminal …
Playing Fair With Prisoners, Richard Dagger
Playing Fair With Prisoners, Richard Dagger
Political Science Faculty Publications
Oddness aside, however, I think there is much to recommend the attempt to restore rehabilitation to a central place in the practice of punishment. Nor do I think that rehabilitation must displace retribution in that practice. Properly understood, the two aims are not only compatible but also complementary. If we are to understand them properly, though, we shall need to see them as components of a theory of punishment that is grounded in considerations of fair play. Such a theory also has the advantage of offering guidance with regard to other controversial matters of penal policy, such as the question …
Jean Hampton’S Theory Of Punishment: A Critical Appreciation, Richard Dagger
Jean Hampton’S Theory Of Punishment: A Critical Appreciation, Richard Dagger
Political Science Faculty Publications
Jean Hampton’s work first came to my attention in 1984, when the summer issue of Philosophy & Public Affairs appeared in my mailbox. Hampton’s essay in that issue, “The Moral Education Theory of Punishment,” did not persuade me—or many others, I suspect—that “punishment should not be justified as a deserved evil, but rather as an attempt, by someone who cares, to improve a wayward person” (Hampton 1984, 237). The essay did persuade me, though, that moral education is a plausible aim of punishment, even if it is not the “full and complete justification” Hampton claimed it to be (Hampton 1984, …
Social Contracts, Fair Play, And The Justification Of Punishment, Richard Dagger
Social Contracts, Fair Play, And The Justification Of Punishment, Richard Dagger
Political Science Faculty Publications
In recent years, the counterintuitive claim that criminals consent to their own punishment has been revived by philosophers who attempt to ground the justification of punishment in some version of the social contract. In this paper, I examine three such attempts—“contractarian” essays by Christopher Morris and Claire Finkelstein and an essay by Corey Brettschneider from the rival “contractualist” camp—and I find all three unconvincing. Each attempt is plausible, I argue, but its plausibility derives not from the appeal to a social contract but from considerations of fair play. Rather than look to the social contract for a justification of punishment, …
Play Fair With Punishment, Richard Dagger
Play Fair With Punishment, Richard Dagger
Political Science Faculty Publications
If we want to provide a justification for legal punishment, then, we must answer two distinct questions: (1) What justifies punishment as a social practice? and (2) What justifies punishing particular persons? The principle of fair play is an especially attractive theory of punishment, I shall agree, because it offers plausible and compelling answers to both these questions. I shall also suggest that there is a third question - How should we punish those who commit crimes? - that fair play cannot answer without help from other sources.
Restitution, Punishment, And Debts To Society, Richard Dagger
Restitution, Punishment, And Debts To Society, Richard Dagger
Political Science Faculty Publications
Of the many developments in the area of criminal justice over the last twenty years or so, the rediscovery of the victim may well be the most heartening. This rediscovery has produced both a new field of study, victimology, and a number of interesting programs and proposals that aim to redress the injuries suffered by the victims of crime. To this point, however, the rediscovery of the victim has not worked a fundamental transformation of our system of criminal justice. The question I wish to address here is whether it should do so.