Abstract
After providing a taxonomy of criminal recidivism, I pose in this chapter certain problems for the general idea of increased punishments for criminal recidivism, and argue for what appears to be the most reasonable position on the problem from a retributivist perspective, one which takes seriously the concepts of desert, responsibility, and proportionate punishment.
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Notes
- 1.
Jesper Ryberg, “Recidivism, Multiple Offending and Legal Justice,” Danish Yearbook of Philosophy, 36 (2001), pp. 69–94.
- 2.
I ignore the cases of criminal recidivism wherein such criminals escape legal trial and punishment, or those, like Jeffrey Dahmer and the Green River (BTK) killer, who repeat their crimes but will never be allowed the freedom to possibly repeat their crimes post-sentencing and punishment. And it is important to distinguish, as Ryberg and others do, between criminal recidivism and multiple offending. One difference between the two is that the former requires that the criminal acts in question are met with due process, while the latter makes no such assumption.
- 3.
Michael Davis, To Make the Punishment Fit the Crime (Boulder: Westview, 1992), p. 129.
- 4.
Davis, To Make the Punishment Fit the Crime, p. 129.
- 5.
This idea is consistent with the notion of criminal recidivism found in Davis, To Make the Punishment Fit the Crime, pp. 134–135.
- 6.
“Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except for punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction” (emphasis provided).
- 7.
Jesper Ryberg, “Retributivism and Multiple Offending,” Res Publica, 11 (2005), p. 220.
- 8.
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© 2013 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
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Corlett, J.A. (2013). Retributivism and Recidivism. In: Responsibility and Punishment. Library of Ethics and Applied Philosophy, vol 34. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-0776-4_7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-0776-4_7
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