Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Criminal Law Blogs -> Sentencing Law and Policy

Criminal Law

: Sentencing Law and Policy

Deep weekend thoughts from SSRN

By Douglas A. Berman

What looks like a deep and interesting paper for weekend reading can be found here via SSRN.  The paper is titled "Facing the Consequences: The Abolitionist Challenge," and here is the abstract:I argue that standard consequentialist considerations offered in support of punishment make for a weaker case than is usually assumed.  This is because consequentialist arguments for punishment rely on an overly broad conception of punishment that overlooks some of punishment's essential characteristics.  I argue in favor of a narrower conception that highlights the possibility of substantive, non-punitive alternatives to punishment capable of securing many of the same good consequences as punishment. In light of this possibility, I argue, Abolitionism, the view that punishment is unjustified, poses a serious challenge to consequentialist justifications of punishment...continue to full post

Full post as published by Sentencing Law and Policy on April 25, 2008 (boomark / email).