Punishment and Theories of Justice: Comments on Sadurski and Hoekema

Extract

The debate about theories justifying punishment has been continuing for centuries now. Many questions are involved, and all must be answered by a complete theory justifying punishment. But the two questions which must be answered by any attempt at justifying punishment are who should be punished (and why) and what the measure and mode of that punishment should be. The practice of punishment as we know it consists of the monopolised and deliberate infliction of suffering on the punished individual, after he was convicted of an offence, by the State. Thus the justification of punishment must address questions such as that of the relationships between offences and moral wrongs, or the implications of difficulties of proof or of the inevitable fact that only some offenders are caught and convicted to punishing. But the intensity of the debate is heightened by the fact that at least part of the controversy concerns even punishment for the most heinous crimes, when there are no problems of evidence or selective enforcement. The debate goes to the very core of the practice of punishing. It is with this aspect of justifying punishment that I shall deal.