What’s Really Wrong with Fining Crimes? On the Hard Treatment of Criminal Monetary Fines

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ivó Coca Vila
Keyword(s):  
Hard Treatment

The Conventional Problem with Corporate Sentencing (and One Unconventional Solution)

2021 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 397-432
Author(s):  
W. Robert Thomas
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Criminal Law ◽  
Unique Form ◽  
Criminal Justice Reform ◽  
Common Response ◽  
Corporate Punishment ◽  
Hard Treatment

A recent wave of expressive accounts of corporate criminal law operate on the promise that corporate punishment can express a unique form of condemnation not capturable through civil enforcement. Unfortunately, the realities of corporate sentencing have thus far failed to make good on this expressive promise. Viewed in light of existing conventions that imbue meaning into our practices of punishment, corporate sentences rarely impose hard treatment in a manner or degree that these conventions seem to require. Accordingly, standard corporate sanctions turn out to be ill-suited to deliver—and, often, will likely undermine—the stigmatic punch upon which expressive defenses of corporate criminal law depend. A common response to this conventional problem with corporate sentencing has been to propose more, and harsher, corporate punishments. However, this approach overlooks the extent to which corporate punishment derives its stigmatic force from preexisting norms and conventions concerning individual punishment. If trying to improve corporate punishment, then, expressivists might instead seek either to leverage or to dismantle the underlying conventions that give existing sanctions meaning. An example of the former strategy would be to revitalize long-neglected proposals for corporate shaming by adopting a criminal convention currently absent from the corporate space—namely, the pervasive, stigmatic application of epithets like “thief” or “felon.” An example of the latter would be to join criminal justice reformers in targeting conventions that, in recent decades, have enabled increasingly draconian sentencing practices. On this view, dissolving corporate sentencing’s conventional problem may represent a further, incidental benefit of systemic criminal justice reform.

Mercy Triumphs over Judgement: Intrusive or Enabling Mercy?

2020 ◽  
pp. 167-194
Author(s):  
Richard Bourne
Keyword(s):  
Restorative Justice ◽  
Moral Agency ◽  
Theological Anthropology ◽  
Character Formation ◽  
Moral Anthropology ◽  
Hard Treatment ◽  
Theological Critique ◽  
Justice And Mercy

This chapter engages in a philosophical and theological critique of thinkers who construe justice and mercy as contradictory norms. It develops a theological account of restorative justice in which mercy is understood as the ‘operative condition’ enabling the pursuit of justice beyond mere retribution. It elaborates this through an account of the moral anthropology inherent in Christian accounts of penance which understand moral agency as a time-bound pursuit of character-formation. Justice is pursued not in meting out a measure of proportionate hard-treatment, but in the merciful gift of the ‘penitential time’ which may enable reform of character and action. It ends with a tentative account of sanctification, desire and desistence and suggests these aspects of theological anthropology might inform a critique of the criminogenic machine of consumerism.

Rights Forfeiture and Punishment

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Wellman
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Law ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
Core Values ◽  
Retributive Justice ◽  
International Criminal Law ◽  
Moral Permissibility ◽  
Side Constraints ◽  
Hard Treatment ◽  
Procedural Rights ◽  
Core Issues

In Rights Forfeiture and Punishment, Christopher Heath Wellman argues that those of us who seek to defend the moral permissibility of punishment should shift our focus from general justifying aims to moral side constraints. Given that persons typically have a right not to be subjected to the hard treatment of punishment, it would seem natural to conclude that the permissibility of punishment is centrally a question of rights. Despite this, the vast majority of theorists working on punishment focus instead on important aims, such as achieving retributive justice, deterring crime, restoring victims, or expressing society’s core values. The book argues that these aims may well explain why we should want a properly constructed system of punishment, but none shows why it would be permissible to institute one. Only a rights-based analysis will suffice, because the type of justification we seek for punishment must demonstrate that punishment is permissible, and it would be permissible just in case it violated no one’s rights. On this book’s view, punishment is permissible only when the wrongdoer has forfeited her right against punishment by culpably violating (or at least attempting to violate) the rights of others. After defending rights forfeiture theory against the standard objections, the book explains this theory’s implications for a number of core issues in criminal law, including the authority of the state, international criminal law, the proper scope of the criminal law and the tort/crime distinction, procedural rights, and the justification of mala prohibita.

A Reply to Bickenbach

1988 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 787-793 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. Antony Duff
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Punishment ◽  
Hard Treatment

Jerome Bickenbach has provided a fair and sympathetic account of my argument in Trials and Punishments, and has clarified some of the book’s obscurities - for which I am very grateful: I will focus my response on his main objection to my account of punishment, since I am not persuaded that the objection holds.Bickenbach argues that my ideal account of what punishment ought to be if it is to be adequately justified would actually show, if it succeeds, that criminal punishment (or at least punishment involving hard treatment) cannot be justified at all. ‘Criminal punishment, it would appear, is unjustifiable when it is needed, but justifiable only if it is no longer required’ (786). It would be justifiable if it was imposed on a criminal who shared the values embodied in the laws of the true community to which she belonged: but it would then be unnecessary, since in such cases ‘blame alone’ (or, one might add, a formal conviction or a purely symbolic punishment) would suffice for the communicative and persuasive purposes which punishment should ideally serve. It would be necessary if the criminal was a committed nonconformist who rejected the community’s values: but it would then be unjustifiable, since in such cases it could not serve the purposes which punishment should ideally serve.

State Punishment and International Criminal Law

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Heath Wellman
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Law ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
The State ◽  
International Criminal Law ◽  
State Punishment ◽  
Legal Proceedings ◽  
Hard Treatment ◽  
Open Question ◽  
Exclusive Right

Even if we agree that punishment is permissible just in case the person punished has forfeited her right against this hard treatment, it remains an open question as to who may mete out this punishment. If anyone has an exclusive right to punish the wrongdoer, it would presumably be the victim, so those of us who think that the state enjoys sole authority over the punitive process must explain how the state acquires its moral dominion over the criminal legal proceedings. This chapter provides this explanation by arguing that the state violates no rights in claiming a monopoly over the punitive process only because it is uniquely capable of adequately realizing the morally significant aims that a system of punishment can achieve.

Health Literacy of Oncologic Patients and Their Informal Caregivers

2022 ◽  
pp. 238-255
Author(s):  
Ana Cristina de Almeida Marinho Diniz ◽  
Catarina Isabel Gomes Mendes Ferreira ◽  
Maria Cândida Damião ◽  
Helena Cunha Xavier
Keyword(s):  
Quality Improvement ◽  
Health Literacy ◽  
Health Professionals ◽  
Informal Caregivers ◽  
Oncological Patient ◽  
Oncologic Patients ◽  
Hard Treatment ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Consequent Improvement ◽  
Safe Care

The haemato-oncological patient requires care due to the impact of the disease itself as well as the hard treatment. Health professionals and informal caregivers also play a central role in this multipart and demanding process of caring and management of the disease. Communication and health literacy to the patients and respective caregivers are crucial in promoting safe care. The development of quality improvement projects by health organizations has contributed to increase health literacy among its participants. Its implementation contributes to a closer relationship between health professionals, patients, and informal caregivers with a consequent improvement in the response to their needs.

Dostoevsky and Education through Punishment

2018 ◽  
Vol 80 (3) ◽  
pp. 463-486
Author(s):  
Chris Barker
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Moral Education ◽  
Legal Authority ◽  
Moral Reform ◽  
Crime And Punishment ◽  
Legal Punishment ◽  
Moral Agents ◽  
Education Theory ◽  
Hard Treatment ◽  
Point Of Departure

AbstractIn an important 1984 paper, “The Moral Education Theory of Punishment,” Jean Hampton argues that the practice of inflicting painful criminal punishments is justified only if punishment is morally educative. Hampton's suggestion forms the point of departure for this article on Dostoevsky'sCrime and Punishment. I show that Dostoevsky agrees with Hampton that punishment should aim at moral reform; however, Dostoevsky presents no evidence that self-punishment or legal punishment reliably cultivates respect for law, legal authority, oneself, or others as moral agents. Instead, Dostoevsky's post-Siberian writings are highly critical of Russian criminal justice, and emphasize that moral education comes through dialogue, reflection, and criticism. This highly individualized treatment may be experienced as painful, but it does not have to result from, and it may even be impeded by, legal “hard treatment.”

Sentencing multiple conviction offenders

2021 ◽  
pp. 147737082199690
Author(s):  
Jakub Drápal
Keyword(s):  
Repeat Offenders ◽  
Penal Codes ◽  
Hard Treatment

Sentenced offenders who re-offend prior to serving their previously imposed sentence (multiple conviction offenders) are situated between multiple and repeat offenders. This article examines how they should be sentenced based on censure, consequentialist and desert theories. I conclude that these aims cannot be achieved if they are treated as repeat offenders, and neither can the requirement of proportionality. Censure is, similarly, communicated primarily via hard treatment not via sentence pronouncement. I further analyse all continental European penal codes; half of them do not have any provision governing the sentencing of multiple conviction offenders (tacitly treating them as repeat offenders) and only two countries provide detailed sentencing guidance. I conclude by offering recommendations for the principled sentencing of multiple conviction offenders.

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