Explore the vast range of titles available.

This volume represents the first collection of essays devoted exclusively to Jacques Derrida's Death Penalty Seminars, conducted from 1999 to 2001. The volume includes essays from a range of scholars working in philosophy, law, Francophone studies, and comparative literature, including established Derridians, activist scholars, and emerging scholars. These essays attempt to elucidate and expand upon Derrida's deconstruction of the theologico-political logic of the death penalty in order to construct a new form of abolitionism, one not rooted in the problematic logics of sovereign power. These essays provide remarkable insight into Derrida’s ethical and political projects; this volume will not only explore the implications of Derrida’s thought on capital punishment and mass incarceration, but will also help to further elucidate the philosophical groundwork for his later deconstructions of sovereign power and the human/animal divide. Because Derrida is deconstructing the logic of the death penalty, rather than the death penalty itself, his seminars will prove useful to scholars and activists opposing all forms of state sanctioned killing. In compiling this volume, our goals were twofold: first, to make a case for Derrida's continuing importance in debates on capital punishment, mass incarceration, and police brutality, and second, to construct a new, versatile abolitionism, one capable of confronting all forms the death penalty might take.

This book presents a comprehensive overview of what the criminal law would look like if organised around the principle that those who deserve punishment should receive punishment commensurate with, but no greater than, that which they deserve. Larry Alexander and Kimberly Kessler Ferzan argue that desert is a function of the actor's culpability, and that culpability is a function of the risks of harm to protected interests that the actor believes he is imposing and his reasons for acting in the face of those risks. The authors deny that resultant harms, as well as unperceived risks, affect the actor's desert. They thus reject punishment for inadvertent negligence as well as for intentions or preparatory acts that are not risky. Alexander and Ferzan discuss the reasons for imposing risks that negate or mitigate culpability, the individuation of crimes, and omissions.

Crime and punishment are social and cultural manifestations; they are closely bound up with people's perceptions of morality, norms and values. In this book, Nils Christie argues that crime is a fluid and shallow concept - acts that could be construed as criminal are unlimited and crime is therefore in endless supply. It should not be forgotten that there are alternatives, both in the definition of crime, and in responses to it. A Suitable Amount of Crime looks at the great variations between countries over what are considered 'unwanted acts', how many are constructed as criminal and how many are punished. It explains the differences between eastern and western Europe, between the USA and the rest of the world. The author laments the size of prison populations in countries with large penal sectors, and asks whether the international community has a moral obligation to 'shame' states that are punitive in the extreme.The book is written in an engaging and easily

The legitimacy and performance of the traditional criminal justice system is the subject of intense scrutiny as the world economic crisis continues to put pressure on governments to cut the costs of the criminal justice system. This volume brings together the leading work on restorative justice to achieve two objectives: to construct a comprehensive and up-to-date conceptual framework for restorative justice suitable even for newcomers; and to challenge the barriers of restorative justice in the hope of taking its theory and practice a step further. The selected articles start by answering some fundamental questions about restorative justice regarding its historical and philosophical origins, and challenge the concept by bringing into the debate the human rights and equality discourses. Also included is material based on empirical testing of restorative justice claims especially those impacting on reoffending rates, victim satisfaction and reintegration. The volume concludes with a critique of restorative justice as well as with analytical thinking that aims to push its barriers. It is hoped that the investigations offered by this volume not only offer hope for a better system for abolitionists and reformists, but also new and convincing evidence to persuade the sceptics in the debate over restorative justice. Theo Gavrielides is an international expert in criminal justice and human rights theory, policy and practice. His current research is at the cutting edge of restorative justice and juvenile justice. He is an advisor to governments and international bodies, and is a pioneer of user-led methods of research, policy and legislative reform. He is the founder and Director of the international think-tank Independent Academic Research Studies (IARS), and the founder and co-Director of the Restorative Justice for All international institute. He is also a Visiting Professor in Canadian and British universities.

This book presents the author's most recent ideas on punishment, forgiveness, and the emotions of resentment, shame, guilt, remorse, love, and jealousy. In the author's view, conscious rationales of principle—such as crime control or giving others what in justice they deserve—do not always drive our decisions to punish or condemn others for wrongdoing. Sometimes our decisions are in fact driven by powerful and rather base emotions such as malice, spite, envy, and cruelty. But our decisions to punish or condemn can also be driven by noble emotions. Indeed, if we punish to express the justified resentment and indignation that decent people feel toward the wronging of a human being, punishment and condemnation can be seen as acts of love. Once we realize the vital roles that emotions can play in punishment and other forms of condemnation, we can explore them in a variety of important ways. Jealousy sometimes causes crimes, forgiveness allows us to overcome resentment, and mercy—inspired by compassion—limits the severity of punishment. All these emotions may be called “moral emotions”—meaning simply that they are emotions that essentially involve a moral belief. The chapters explore, from philosophical and religious perspectives, a variety of moral emotions and their relationship to punishment and condemnation or to decisions to lessen punishment or condemnation.

The series, St Andrews Studies in Philosophy and Public Life originates in the Centre for Ethics, Philosophy and Public Affairs, University of St Andrews and is under the general editorship of John Haldane. The series includes monographs, collections of essays and occasional anthologies of source material representing study in those areas of philosophy most relevant to topics of public importance, with the aim of advancing the contribution of philosophy in the discussion of these topics. In this volume, the author sets aside the usual division between theories of punishment that do or do not focus on retribution. In its place he proposes and explores the distinction between internalist and externalist theories. The final chapter discusses the deterrent value of punishment.

The fundamental contrast between the ideas that punishment is morally justified because people have behaved wrongly (retributivist), and that punishment is morally justified only when it has good consequences (consequentialist/utilitarian), has long existed and most likely always will. Beginning in the 1960s and 1970s, retributivist ways of thinking became much more influential than they had been for the preceding century, but it is clear now that no paradigm shift from consequentialist to retributivist ideas occurred, and that thinking about punishment is in a period of flux. This book reconsiders the extent of its resurgence and its current prospects. Chapters covering topics such as punishment theory, law, and philosophy engage with contemporary ideas about restorative justice, therapeutic jurisprudence, rehabilitation of offenders, and mandatory punishments that are difficult to reconcile with retributive analytical frameworks. It is crucial to understand why and when individuals can be deprived of their property, their liberty, and their lives in the pursuit of collective interests, and this book grapples anew with contemporary debates over these perennial questions.

It has long been held that humans need government to impose social order on a chaotic, dangerous world. How, then, did early humans survive on the Serengeti Plain, surrounded by faster, stronger, and bigger predators in a harsh and forbidding environment?Pirates, Prisoners, and Lepersexamines an array of natural experiments and accidents of human history to explore the fundamental nature of how human beings act when beyond the scope of the law. Pirates of the 1700s, the leper colony on Molokai Island, prisoners of the Nazis, hippie communes of the 1970s, shipwreck and plane crash survivors, and many more diverse groups-they all existed in the absence of formal rules, punishments, and hierarchies. Paul and Sarah Robinson draw on these real-life stories to suggest that humans are predisposed to be cooperative, within limits. What these \"communities\" did and how they managed have dramatic implications for shaping our modern institutions. Should today's criminal justice system build on people's shared intuitions about justice? Or are we better off acknowledging this aspect of human nature but using law to temper it? Knowing the true nature of our human character and our innate ideas about justice offers a roadmap to a better society.

Punishment is the imposition, by a legitimate authority, of a painful consequence upon one who has offended the social order by indulging in acts contrary to the social good. Punishment is understood to serve a primary objective in any society: it rehabilitates or reforms (re-forms or shapes anew) the psyches of social offenders to bring them in line with prevailing codes of behavior. Punishment thus is a highly conservative force, affirming simultaneously the codes of conduct deemed desirable within the society and the status quo of power relations that hold sway in the society. Punishment is a form of social teaching. One of the favorite forms of didactic pain to which legitimate authorities turn, in teaching conformity to social regulations, is the psychological pain of shame. Shame is a special favorite in the penology of societies of the Western world, whose governing logic is already grounded in the shame-based religions of Judaism and Christianity. Parents, school teachers, religious leaders, and state authorities readily employ shame as an effective method for teaching social lessons. Shame is a powerful force that reaches deep into the psyche of the offender and gnaws away at her sense of self-worth and identity, with longstanding and devastating existential effects. Shame has profound and enduring effects, because it has the capacity to transform an empirical fact (of having done something unacceptable) into an ontological reality (of being unacceptable as a human being). Shame dehumanizes. Shame is a powerfully effective tool for altering behavior, but because shame dehumanizes, it often fails to have the effect that the punisher is seeking to bring about. Shame sickens souls, rather than cures them. It sickens them to such a degree that shame more often acts as a promoter of criminality than as a teacher of the social good.