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"The Comparative Nature of Punishment"

By Douglas A. Berman

The title of this post is the title of this new piece by Adam Kolber now available through SSRN.  Here is the abstract: Suppose we punished people by forced poverty. Instead of a traditional dollar fine, we would limit offenders' personal possessions to the bare essentials. For a one-year period of forced poverty, a billionaire would lose access to his billions, while a person with just the bare essentials would lose nothing.  Clearly, a year of forced poverty has a disproportionally severe impact on the billionaire. Now suppose instead that the billionaire and the poor person are sentenced to prison for a year. In prison, we will, in fact, punish them with forced poverty by limiting their personal possessions to just the bare essentials...continue to full post

Full post as published by Sentencing Law and Policy on September 14, 2008 (boomark / email).