A Theory of Punishment as a Blaming Response to Culpable Wrongdoing

Abstract This chapter connects the accounts of punishment and blame from the preceding two chapters. Section 7.1 explains why punishment is an appropriate response to blameworthiness. It is not because it can induce guilt, but because it reinforces censure; provides an occasion for a wrongdoer to engage in serious reflection about her guilt; helps to ensure that she is not happy about her wrongdoing; and collects the amends that she owes either as material compensation or in the form of contribution to deterrence. All of these functions help address the need for reconciliation between wrongdoer and the political community. Section 7.2 then explores utilitarian accounts of punishment and explains why deterrence and rehabilitation fit my account of punishment as responding to blameworthiness, but incapacitation does not, except in some secondary ways. Section 7.3 discusses the special problem of punishing those who do not accept their guilt, and especially those who predictably will never accept their guilt. And Section 7.4 concludes by reexamining the sense in which punishments are deserved but penalties are not.