Publisher's Synopsis
"Crime and punishment" brings together the latest views on the theoretical and practical justifications of punishment for crime. This collection of chapter presented at a PACC symposium primarily offers a retributivist view but shows that retributivism is a possible position for civil libertarians as well as conservatives. It also details how retributivism may be chosen by both those who favour more severe punishments and by those who prefer lighter sentences.;Included in the book are a theoretical debate among Walter Berns, Daniel N. Robinson and Jeffrey Leigh Sedgwick about the justification of retribution and a discussion among William J. Kunkle Jr, Austin D. Sarat and Jerome H. Skolnick on the more practical aspects of the punishment debate.;This book implies the need for future debate in two ways - it aims to demonstrate the need and value of grounding policy debate in the most serious political and moral philosophy of the past, and it opens up a number of avenues of exploration on such questions as uniform sentencing, pretrial incarceration and humane penology.
