Criminal Law Without Punishment: How Our Society Might Benefit From Abolishing Punitive Sanctions

How can criminal punishment be morally justified? Zisman addresses this classical question in legal philosophy. He provides two maybe surprising answers to the question. First, as for a methodological claim, it argues that this question cannot be answered by philosophers and legal scholars alone. Rather, we need to take into account research from social psychology, economy, anthropology, and so on in order to properly analyze the arguments in defense of criminal punishment. Second, the book argues that when such research is properly accounted for, none of the current attempts to justify criminal punishment succeed. But that does not imply that the state should do nothing about criminal wrongdoing. Rather, the arguments that were supposed to justify criminal punishment actually speak in favor of an alternative approach to criminal law: restitution to the victim and restorative justice. That is to say, the state should coerce offenders to provide restitution for the harm inflicted on victims, and whenever possible restorative approaches should be taken to address criminal wrongdoing. Acknowledgment Contents Part I: The Problem of Punishment Chapter 1 Another “New Perspective”? Chapter 2 Definitions, Theses, and Method Part II: Backward-Looking Approaches Introduction Chapter 3 Brute Retributivism Chapter 4 Fairness Chapter 5 Penance and Censure Chapter 6 Victims’ Rights Part III: Forward-Looking Approaches Chapter 7 Deterrence Part IV: Towards a Pluralistic Theory of Corrective Justice Chapter 8 Weaving the Patchwork Rug Chapter 9 Objections to Corrective Approaches to Criminal Law Chapter 10 Epilogue References Index of Names Index of Subjects