Theory of criminal justice

The theory of criminal justice is the branch of philosophy of law that deals with criminal justice and in particular punishment. The theory of criminal justice has deep connections to other areas of philosophy, such as political philosophy and ethics, as well as to criminal justice in practice.

Justice and criminal justice

Distinction from general justice

Typically, legal theorists and philosophers consider four distinct kinds of justice: corrective justice, distributive justice, procedural justice, and retributive justice.[1] Corrective justice is the idea that liability rectifies the injustice one person inflicts upon another (found in modern day contract law).[2] Distributive justice seeks to appropriately distribute pleasure and pain between the offender and the victim by punishing the offender.[3] Procedural justice focuses on the fairness in the processes that punish criminals. Retributive justice is perhaps best captured by the phrase lex talionis (the principle of "an eye for an eye"), which traces back to the Code of Hammurabi.

Criminal law generally falls under retributive justice, a theory of justice that considers proportionate punishment a morally acceptable response to crime. The principle of lex talionis received its most well known philosophical defense from Immanuel Kant.[4] Criminal law is no longer considered a purely retributive undertaking; deterrence figures prominently in the justification of the practice and in the rules themselves.[5]

gollark: You CANNOT make a robot which needs NO maintenence.
gollark: > Feeding and maintaining human slaves costs a lot more than running an autonomous robot that only requires electronic energy, which is easily harvested by solar panelsBut it doesn't require electricity only, it requires parts to be replaced.
gollark: I mean, you can't effectively use slaves for anything beyond menial labour, because then they need to do thinking and have some autonomy and actually receive stuff beyond bare necessities.
gollark: Although many tasks don't need generalized robots as much as big motors or something.
gollark: On the other hand, modern robot-y systems need microprocessors, which are stupidly expensive and hard to make, and humans wouldn't.

See also
  • Marginal deterrence

References
  1. Richard A. Posner, The Problems of Jurisprudence. pp. 313-352
  2. Weinrib, Ernest J. (2002). "Corrective Justice in a Nutshell". The University of Toronto Law Journal. 52 (4): 349–356. doi:10.2307/825933. ISSN 0042-0220. JSTOR 825933.
  3. author., Posner, Richard A. (2014). Economic analysis of law. ISBN 9781454833888. OCLC 863695610.
  4. Kant, Immanuel. (original 1785.) Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals. Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten. (in German)
  5. See e.g., H.L.A. Hart, Liberty and Morality (1963)
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