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PUNISHMENT ‐ A TALE OF TWO ISLANDS
Author(s) -
Walker Mark Thomas
Publication year - 1993
Publication title -
ratio
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.475
H-Index - 29
eISSN - 1467-9329
pISSN - 0034-0006
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-9329.1993.tb00053.x
Subject(s) - retributive justice , desert (philosophy) , punishment (psychology) , appeal , deterrence (psychology) , obligation , the imaginary , law and economics , moral obligation , criminology , law , epistemology , philosophy , economic justice , sociology , political science , social psychology , psychology , psychoanalysis
An imaginary desert island scenario provides the setting for a story which is designed to expose the shortcomings of deterrence, reform and restitution theories of punishment, and to emphasize the intuitive appeal of Kant's strong retributivist insistence that there is a positive obligation to punish offenders just qua offenders, and not merely an automatic right to do so (weak retributivism). Nevertheless, it is urged that though the fact that an offence has been committed can in itself suffice to establish that punishment is in some sense required, this requirement at most supports a position that is intermediate between Kantian retributivism and weak retributivism.