Facing the Consequences

Criminal Law and Philosophy 8 (3):589-604 (2014)
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Abstract

According to deterrence justifications of legal punishment, legal punishment is justified at least in part because it deters offenses. These justifications rely on important empirical assumptions, e.g., that non-punitive enforcement can't deter or that it can't deter enough. I’ll challenge these assumptions and argue that extant deterrence justifications of legal punishment fail. In the process, I examine contemporary deterrence research and argue that it provides no support for these justifications.

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Nathan Hanna
Drexel University

Citations of this work

The Nature of Punishment: Reply to Wringe.Nathan Hanna - 2017 - Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 20 (5):969-976.
The Nature of Punishment Revisited: Reply to Wringe.Nathan Hanna - 2020 - Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 23 (1):89-100.
Against Legal Punishment.Nathan Hanna - 2022 - In Matthew C. Altman (ed.), The Palgrave Handbook on the Philosophy of Punishment. Palgrave-Macmillan. pp. 559-78.

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References found in this work

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Two concepts of rules.John Rawls - 1955 - Philosophical Review 64 (1):3-32.
Well-being and death.Ben Bradley - 2009 - New York: Oxford University Press.
The Problem of Political Authority.Michael Huemer - 2013 - New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

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