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Victim‐Centered Retributivism
Author(s) -
Lippke Richard L.
Publication year - 2003
Publication title -
pacific philosophical quarterly
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.914
H-Index - 32
eISSN - 1468-0114
pISSN - 0279-0750
DOI - 10.1111/1468-0114.00166
Subject(s) - culpability , retributive justice , punitive damages , punishment (psychology) , state (computer science) , law and economics , criminology , function (biology) , criminal law , law , political science , sociology , psychology , economic justice , social psychology , algorithm , evolutionary biology , computer science , biology
Critics charge that retributivists fail to show why the state should concern itself with ensuring that criminal offenders are punished in accordance with their ill deserts. Drawing on the notion that the state should attempt to equalize the realization of the interests designated by rights, it is argued that legal punishment restores the equality of condition, disrupted by criminal conduct, that all citizens are entitled to. While this equality of condition might be restored in various ways, it is argued that the imposition of punitive losses is the most appropriate way to restore it in most cases. An account of the ill deserts of offenders, as a function of the harms their crimes produce and the extent of their culpability for those harms, is briefly elaborated.