How much punishment is deserved? Two alternatives to proportionality

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Authors

Metz, Thaddeus
Metz, Mika'il

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Volume Title

Publisher

MDPI

Abstract

When it comes to the question of how much the state ought to punish a given offender, the standard understanding of the desert theory for centuries has been that it should give him a penalty proportionate to his offense, that is, an amount of punishment that fits the severity of his crime. In this article, we maintain that a desert theorist is not conceptually or otherwise required to hold a proportionality requirement. We show that there is logical space for at least two other, non-proportionate ways of meting out deserved penalties, and we also argue that they have important advantages relative to the dominant, proportionality approach.

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Keywords

Desert, Proportionality, Punishment, Retributivism, Sentencing

Sustainable Development Goals

Citation

Metz, T.; Metz, M. How Much Punishment Is Deserved? Two Alternatives to Proportionality. Philosophies 2022, 7, 25. https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies7020025.