The Role of Remorse in Criminal Justice

This essay reviews the role that remorse does and ought to play in criminal justice. Evidence of remorse appears to influence decision-making in a number of stages of the criminal process. But should it? Remorse might have an appropriate role given certain assumptions about the general justifying aim of criminal justice. The chapter also looks at the nature of remorse as an emotion, and how different conceptions of the emotions can inform our understanding of the role remorse might play. There are serious challenges that face any proposal to give criminal justice officials powers to evaluate remorsefulness and to treat offenders differently on that basis. The chapter concludes that it may be the best we can do is to attempt to design a system that acknowledges the appropriateness of remorse but does not disadvantage those who are unable to display it to the satisfaction of a designated official

Retributivism and Totality: Can Bulk Discounts for Multiple Offending Fit the Crime?

This chapter examines how multiple offenders seem to pose a problem for broadly retributive principles of sentencing, focusing on the proper place and exercise of discretion to show why such problems are only apparent. It begins with a discussion of the issue of multiple offending and the discretion it seems to give sentencers as well as the bulk-discount principle that appears to guide decisions. It then considers two ways in which bulk discounts may appear to conflict with retributive sentencing theory, the fittingness problem and the selection problem. It also analyzes the key guiding thought within retributive approaches to criminal justice and distinguishes between two types of retributivism, moralistic and legalistic. The chapter concludes with the argument that retributivism is compatible with common approaches to multiple-offense sentencing

Intrusive Intervention and Opacity Respect

I claim that coercive neuro-interventions on offenders violate requirements of respect. I explore this idea with reference to Ian Carter’s notion of ‘opacity respect’ – that is, the idea that a form of opacity that Carter calls ‘evaluative abstinence’ is a necessary feature of respect. I argue that opacity is a necessary part of relating to one another as equals. This is not to say that we should pursue ignorance, or even pretend it. As I interpret it, it is rather the claim that the respect structurally necessary to some inherently valuable form of human relations sometimes requires that we not acknowledge what we see, or could see. The demands of that way of relating to one another are therefore violated when we inquire into the interventions that would be necessary to alter someone’s behaviour for the better, and when we deploy the knowledge thus gained in subjecting them to a programme of behaviour-modification

Considering Murphy on Human Executioners

I am very grateful to Jeffrie Murphy for his response to my paper1 and to Jonathan Jacobs for the chance to respond in turn to Murphy’s criticisms. It is a particular honor for me to respond to Jeffrie Murphy, whose inspiring writings on retribution, the emotions, and human interaction I have long admired and taken as a guiding point for my own work. No excuses, however: I do not mean to attribute the weaknesses in the paper under discussion to Murphy’s influence, or to curry favor. Murphy places some significant charges at my door; in what follows I re-state his target as I understand it, and then examine whether my argument has the resources to meet his criticisms