Search Results

An alternative to retributivist views of punishment seeks to justify punishment in virtue of its communicative potential. Punishment is imposed, on this view, to repair the wrong that the offender has done to his victim by forcing him to apologise for his wrongdoing, and by compelling him to recognise that what he has done is wrong. This chapter argues that this communicative view is a qualified success. Whilst it is permissible for the state to harm offenders in order to encourage them to recognise that what they have done is wrong, this could not justify the creation of costly state institutions. This argument implies that deterrence will be central to any justification of state punishment.

This chapter offers new perspectives on his position that punishment communicates the censure that the offender deserves for his crime, focusing on the challenge of explaining why penal “hard treatment” should be the appropriate means of communication. The chapter meets that challenge by showing that appropriate kinds of penal hard treatment can serve as a vehicle for a two-way communication between offender and political community—the communication of formal censure from community to offender, and of formally apologetic recognition from offender to community—which is motivated by the offender’s wrongdoing as ascertained during a fair trial, which Duff emphasizes as critical to the retributivist project. This chapter goes beyond the author's last book in developing the “apology” dimension and saying more about the relationship between retributive and restorative justice, bringing together ideas from some of the work that he has published since then (most in relatively obscure publications).

This chapter presents an authoritative overview of the nature of remorse and its role in decisions to grant legal mercy, along with the relationship between remorse and apology. It includes comments by some of the nation's top legal scholars from the field of criminal law, tackling topics such as invasions of conscience and faked apologies, the dynamics of remorse, insincere and involuntary public apologies, and the social meaning of apology.

Chapter 5 explores the second main source of data, gained from interviews with victims who had participated in restorative disposals that were facilitated by Devon and Cornwall Police Service. The same format as Chapter 4 is used in examining both the types of hate incident which occurred in this part of the UK and whether this restorative practice helped individuals to recover from their experiences of victimization. The findings are compared with those documented for community mediation—in many cases unfavourably. The chapter highlights the problems associated with using poorly trained facilitators of RJ and more broadly provides a critique of the use of police constables in the administration of RJ.

This chapter explores the Japanese criminal sentencing system both in general and in the context of crimes committed while intoxicated. Sentencing in Japan is based on a “market price” system in which courts usually pronounce sentences that are slightly lower than those requested by prosecutors. In most criminal cases, courts then construct a narrative to explain the sentence. The narrative often takes into account factors like remorse, apology, settlement with the victim, and impact on society. In criminal cases involving intoxicated defendants, courts additionally rely on two specific factors: oaths to stop drinking and the support of others, particularly family members.