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"Empirical Desert"

By Douglas A. Berman

The title of this post is the title of this paper on SSRN from Paul Robertson.  Here is the abstract:It has long been assumed that the goals of doing justice and fighting crime necessarily conflict. Retributivists and utilitarian crime-control advocates commonly see their dispute as irreconcilable, and in a sense it is. It is argued here, however, that in another sense these two fundamental aims of criminal justice may not conflict.  Doing justice may be the most effective means of fighting crime. The extent of the criminal law's effectiveness in avoiding resistance and subversion of an unjust system, in bringing the power of stigmatization to bear, in facilitating, communicating, and maintaining societal consensus on what is and is not condemnable, and in gaining compliance in borderline cases through deference to its moral authority is to a great extent dependent on the degree to which the criminal law has earned moral credibility with the citizens governed by it...continue to full post

Full post as published by Sentencing Law and Policy on July 16, 2008 (boomark / email).