Why Punish? How Much? A Reader on Punishment

Punishment, like all complex human institutions, tends to change as ways of thinking go in and out of fashion. Normative, political, social, psychological, and legal ideas concerning punishment have changed drastically over time, and especially in recent decades. Why Punish? How Much? collects essays from classical philosophers and contemporary theorists to examine these shifts. Michael Tonry has gathered a comprehensive set of readings ranging from Kant, Hegel, and Bentham to recent writings on developments in the behavioral and medical sciences. Together they cover foundations of punishment theory such as consequentialism, retributivism, and functionalism, new approaches like restorative, communitarian, and therapeutic justice, and mixed approaches that attempt to link theory and policy. This volume includes an accessible introduction that chronicles the development of punishment systems and theorizing over the course of the last two centuries. Why Punish? How Much? provides a fresh and comprehensive approach to thinking about punishment and sentencing for a broad range of law, sociology, philosophy, and criminology courses.

Michael Tonry is Sonsky Professor of Law and Public Policy at the University of Minnesota Law School, and Senior Fellow at the Netherlands Institute for the Study of Crime and Law Enforcement at Free University Amsterdam.

Introduction: Thinking about Punishment, Michael Tonry
Part One: Classical Theories
Introduction to Part One
1. The Penal Law and the Law of Pardon, Immanuel Kant
2. Wrong [Das Unrecht], G.W.F. Hegel
3. The Utilitarian Theory of Punishment, Jeremy Bentham
4. Principles of a Rational Penal Code, Sheldon Glueck
5. The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment, C.S. Lewis
6. Legal Values and the Rehabilitative Ideal, Francis Allen
Part Two: Retributive Theories
Introduction to Part Two
7. The Expressive Function of Punishment, Joel Feinberg
8. Marxism and Retribution, Jeffrey Murphy
9. A Paternalist Theory of Punishment, Herbert Morris
10. Punishment and the Rule of Law, T.M. Scanlon
11. Penance, Punishment, and the Limits of Community, R.A. Duff
Part Three: Mixed Theories
Introduction to Part Three
12. Prolegomenon to the Principles of Punishment, H.L.A. Hart
13. Proportionate Sentences: A Desert Perspective, Andrew von Hirsch
14. Proportionality, Parsimony, and Interchangeability of Punishments, Michael Tonry
15. Sentencing and Punishment in Finland: The Decline of the Repressive Ideal, Tapio Lappi-Seppälä
16. Limiting Retributivism, Richard Frase
17. Limiting Excessive Prison Sentencing, Richard Frase
Part Four: Emotion, Intuition, Determinism, and Punishment
Introduction to Part Four
18. Morality and the Retributive Emotions, J.L. Mackie
19. The Role of Moral Philosophers in the Competition between Deontological and Empirical Desert, Paul H. Robinson
20. For the Law, Neuroscience Changes Nothing and Everything, Joshua Greene and Jonathan Cohen
Part Five: Restorative Theories
Introduction to Part Five
21. Restoration in Youth Justice, Lode Walgrave
22. In Search of Restorative Jurisprudence, John Braithwaite
23. The Virtues of Restorative Processes, the Vices of 'Restorative Justice', Paul H. Robinson
24. Restorative Punishment and Punitive Restoration, R.A. Duff
Part Six: Functionalist Theories
Introduction to Part Six
25. From Slavery to Mass Incarceration: Rethinking the 'Race Question' in the US, Loïc Wacquant
26. Labor Market and Penal Sanction: Thoughts on the Sociology of Criminal Justice, Georg Rusche
27. Rules for the Distinction of the Normal from the Pathological, Emile Durkheim
28. The Carceral, Michel Foucault