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Deserved Punishment and Benefits to Victims

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 January 2009

C. L. Ten
C. L. Ten
Affiliation:
Monash University and National University of Singapore, [email protected]
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Abstract

Sher's notion of deserved punishment has unacceptable implications. It does not justify punishing some serious wrongdoers, who are unwilling to commit lesser wrongs, more severely than minor offenders. It requires victim-inflicted punishments which repeat the wrongdoings, with the roles reversed. But if Sher moves away from such victim-inflicted punishments, then his theory should treat wrongdoers like tort-feasors who have to pay monetary compensations to their victims.

Type
Discussions
Information
Utilitas , Volume 12 , Issue 1 , March 2000 , pp. 85 - 90
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2000

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References

1 Sher, George, Desert, Princeton, 1987Google Scholar. I criticized Sher's theory in Ten, C. L., ‘Positive Retributivism’, Social Philosophy and Policy, vii (1990)Google Scholar .

2 Sher, George, Approximate Justice, Lanham, 1997, pp. 165–80Google Scholar .

3 Goldhagen, Daniel Jonah, Hitler's Willing Executioners, London, 1996, p. 4Google Scholar .

4 Approximate Justice, p. 173.

5 Ibid., pp. 171 f.

6 Ibid., p. 171.

7 I am indebted to an anonymous referee for this point. For objections to the lex talionis, see Ten, C. L., Crime, Guilt, and Punishment, Oxford, 1987, pp. 151–3Google Scholar.

8 Approximate Justice, p. 168.

9 Ibid.

10 Ibid.,