Introduction to Political Theory
The ultimate punishment? T he United States is certainly not the only country to practise the death penalty, but it is the count ...
What is punishment? In Chapter 1 we argued that the state is a coercive entity. In Max Weber’s words, the state is that entity t ...
Retributivism Retributivism – the crude version Most people equate retributivism with the slogan ‘an eye for an eye, and a tooth ...
property to be secure but that commits you to respecting other people’s property. You are acting from a law you give yourself. T ...
Two further points should be made (these are not further steps in the argument, but important elaborations of what has been set ...
sense of doing. For example, given the choice between killing one person and ‘allowing’ 19 to live, or ‘standing by’ while all 2 ...
for what is essentially the same crime on grounds that the six-year sentence is intended to ‘send out a message’ – and thus dete ...
Compromise theories (indirect utilitarianism) What we call ‘compromise theories’ are essentially consequentialist theories that ...
determines the rules) and the ‘judge’ (who applies the rules to particular cases without considering the wider purpose of punish ...
on psychopaths. The theory does, however, raise other interesting issues. First, is there a difference between censure and refor ...
restorative justice can be summarised: (a) there must be a deep exchange between offender and victim – and it must be mutual; (b ...
being ‘cruel and unusual’. The ‘unitary trial’ procedure practised in Georgia, whereby the jury simultaneously determined guilt ...
Recall the earlier discussion of retributivism: the act of murder is a universalisation by the murderer of the killing of an inn ...
The sense of injustice if it is found that an innocent person has been executed. The loss to the executed person, both the imme ...
Respecting persons versus using them We will deal with some broader objections to the death penalty in the next section, but an ...
is that capital punishment is murder, but then we need a definition of murder that renders the killing by an individual of anoth ...
and seek redemption (and you do not have to believe in heaven and hell to maintain this view). A retributivist would have less p ...
once! To avoid (b) you either abolish capital punishment or try to ensure that it is consistently practised – but that is extrem ...
Lethal injection involves a cocktail of drugs, administered in three stages, with the first intended to induce unconsciousness, ...
Conclusion We have presented the two dominant justifications for punishment – retributivism and consequentialism – and a number ...
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