To Make The Punishment Fit The Crime

To Make The Punishment Fit The Crime
Author: Michael Davis
Publisher: Westview Press
Total Pages: 288
Release: 1992-09-06
Genre: Law
ISBN:

While everyone may agree that the punishment should fit the crime, it is much harder to reach agreement on just what is called for in specific cases. Philosophical treatments of punishment, which tend to emphasize the nature or justification of punishment in general, are often of no help in dealing with practical questions of the appropriateness of specific punishments. In this collection of often controversial essays, Michael Davis examines many of the practical problems of punishment. Among the issues discussed are how recidivism should be punished, how unsuccessful attempts at crimes should be punished, and how courts should deal with crimes of strict liability. Davis, a long-time contributor to the literature on punishment, also discusses problems of sentencing, and he responds to his earlier critics, including Hyman Gross, Andrew von Hirsch, and R. A. Duff. To Make the Punishment Fit the Crime is written in the rigorous, accessible, and iconoclastic style Davis's readers have come to expect. It is an essential book for philosophers, lawyers, criminologists, and others concerned about the future of criminal justice.

An Essay on Crimes and Punishments

An Essay on Crimes and Punishments
Author: Cesare Beccaria
Publisher: The Lawbook Exchange, Ltd.
Total Pages: 274
Release: 2006
Genre: Criminal justice, Administration of
ISBN: 1584776382

Reprint of the fourth edition, which contains an additional text attributed to Voltaire. Originally published anonymously in 1764, Dei Delitti e Delle Pene was the first systematic study of the principles of crime and punishment. Infused with the spirit of the Enlightenment, its advocacy of crime prevention and the abolition of torture and capital punishment marked a significant advance in criminological thought, which had changed little since the Middle Ages. It had a profound influence on the development of criminal law in Europe and the United States.

The Death of Punishment

The Death of Punishment
Author: Robert Blecker
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
Total Pages: 341
Release: 2013-11-19
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1137381337

For twelve years Robert Blecker, a criminal law professor, wandered freely inside Lorton Central Prison, armed only with cigarettes and a tape recorder. The Death of Punishment tests legal philosophy against the reality and wisdom of street criminals and their guards. Some killers' poignant circumstances should lead us to mercy; others show clearly why they should die. After thousands of hours over twenty-five years inside maximum security prisons and on death rows in seven states, the history and philosophy professor exposes the perversity of justice: Inside prison, ironically, it's nobody's job to punish. Thus the worst criminals often live the best lives. The Death of Punishment challenges the reader to refine deeply held beliefs on life and death as punishment that flare up with every news story of a heinous crime. It argues that society must redesign life and death in prison to make the punishment more nearly fit the crime. It closes with the final irony: If we make prison the punishment it should be, we may well abolish the very death penalty justice now requires.

Punishment Without Crime

Punishment Without Crime
Author: Alexandra Natapoff
Publisher: Basic Books
Total Pages: 320
Release: 2018-12-31
Genre: Law
ISBN: 0465093809

A revelatory account of the misdemeanor machine that unjustly brands millions of Americans as criminals. Punishment Without Crime offers an urgent new interpretation of inequality and injustice in America by examining the paradigmatic American offense: the lowly misdemeanor. Based on extensive original research, legal scholar Alexandra Natapoff reveals the inner workings of a massive petty offense system that produces over 13 million cases each year. People arrested for minor crimes are swept through courts where defendants often lack lawyers, judges process cases in mere minutes, and nearly everyone pleads guilty. This misdemeanor machine starts punishing people long before they are convicted; it punishes the innocent; and it punishes conduct that never should have been a crime. As a result, vast numbers of Americans -- most of them poor and people of color -- are stigmatized as criminals, impoverished through fines and fees, and stripped of drivers' licenses, jobs, and housing. For too long, misdemeanors have been ignored. But they are crucial to understanding our punitive criminal system and our widening economic and racial divides. A Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2018

Of One-Eyed and Toothless Miscreants

Of One-Eyed and Toothless Miscreants
Author: Michael Tonry
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 265
Release: 2019-11
Genre: Law
ISBN: 0190070595

Can punishments ever meaningfully be proportioned in severity to the seriousness of the crimes for which they are imposed? A great deal of attention has been paid to the general justification of punishment, but the thorny practical questions have received significantly less. Serious analysis has seldom delved into what makes crimes more or less serious, what makes punishments more or less severe, and how links are to be made between them. In Of One-eyed and Toothless Miscreants, Michael Tonry has gathered together a distinguished cast of contributors to offer among the first sustained efforts to specify with precision how proportionality can be understood in relation to the implementation of punishment. Each chapter examines scholarly and lay thinking about punishment of people convicted of crimes with particular emphasis on "making the punishment fit the crime." The contributors challenge the most prevalent current theories and emphasize the need for a shift away from the politicized emotionalism of recent decades. They argue that theories that coincided with mass incarceration and rampant injustice to countless individuals are evolving in ways that better countenance moving toward more humane and thoughtful approaches. Written by many of the leading thinkers on punishment, this volume dissects previously undeveloped issues related to considerations of deserved punishment and provides new ways to understand both the severities of punishment and the seriousness of crime.

Punishment in Popular Culture

Punishment in Popular Culture
Author: Austin Sarat
Publisher: NYU Press
Total Pages: 316
Release: 2015-06-05
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1479861952

Resource added for the Criminal Justice – Law Enforcement 105046 and Professional Studies 105045 programs.

The Limits of Blame

The Limits of Blame
Author: Erin I. Kelly
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 241
Release: 2018-11-12
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0674980778

Faith in the power and righteousness of retribution has taken over the American criminal justice system. Approaching punishment and responsibility from a philosophical perspective, Erin Kelly challenges the moralism behind harsh treatment of criminal offenders and calls into question our society’s commitment to mass incarceration. The Limits of Blame takes issue with a criminal justice system that aligns legal criteria of guilt with moral criteria of blameworthiness. Many incarcerated people do not meet the criteria of blameworthiness, even when they are guilty of crimes. Kelly underscores the problems of exaggerating what criminal guilt indicates, particularly when it is tied to the illusion that we know how long and in what ways criminals should suffer. Our practice of assigning blame has gone beyond a pragmatic need for protection and a moral need to repudiate harmful acts publicly. It represents a desire for retribution that normalizes excessive punishment. Appreciating the limits of moral blame critically undermines a commonplace rationale for long and brutal punishment practices. Kelly proposes that we abandon our culture of blame and aim at reducing serious crime rather than imposing retribution. Were we to refocus our perspective to fit the relevant moral circumstances and legal criteria, we could endorse a humane, appropriately limited, and more productive approach to criminal justice.