Metz, ThaddeusMetz, Mika'il2023-01-302023-01-302022-03Metz, T.; Metz, M. How Much Punishment Is Deserved? Two Alternatives to Proportionality. Philosophies 2022, 7, 25. https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies7020025.2409-9287 (online)10.3390/philosophies7020025https://repository.up.ac.za/handle/2263/89029When 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.en© 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).DesertProportionalityPunishmentRetributivismSentencingArticle