Article: Punishment and the spirit of democracy.(I. Why We Punish: The Foundation of Our Concepts of Punishment)

PUNISHMENT THAT IS ADMINISTERED DIRECTLY BY THE STATE IS ONE of those subjects that are hard to pin down. There is no theoretical defense of the reasons for punishment that wins common assent. All the principal justifications for it have a long history, but their interrelationship and their comparative importance differ from thinker to thinker. In any given analysis, furthermore, some justifications may even be ignored or rejected. The explanation and defense of punishment remain open to dispute, and probably always will. Strong intellectual passion, however, does not account for such dispute. In my opinion, punishment is a grave subject, but I do not think that it arouses ...

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