State Denunciation of Crime

Abstract In this paper I am concerned with a problem for communicative theories of punishment. On such theories, punishment is justified at least in part as the authoritative censure or condemnation of crime. But is this compatible with a broadly liberal political outlook? For while liberalism is ge...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of moral philosophy
Main Author: Bennett, Christopher T. (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Published: Brill 2006
In: Journal of moral philosophy
Further subjects:B Punishment
B Duff
B Hegel
B von Hirsch
B Devlin
B communicative theory
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Summary:Abstract In this paper I am concerned with a problem for communicative theories of punishment. On such theories, punishment is justified at least in part as the authoritative censure or condemnation of crime. But is this compatible with a broadly liberal political outlook? For while liberalism is generally thought to take only a very limited interest in its citizens’ attitudes (seeing moral opinion as a matter of legitimate debate), the idea of state denunciation of crime seems precisely to be focused on the attitudes expressed in action. In this paper I analyse the elements of the communicative theory of punishment, assessing the extent to which they can be considered anti-liberal. I argue that, understood in a certain way, the communicative theory, though in some sense communitarian, is compatible with at least one central and attractive non-perfectionist strand in liberalism.
ISSN:1745-5243
Contains:Enthalten in: Journal of moral philosophy
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1177/1740468106071222