Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-5447f9dfdb-lxwkt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-07-30T07:27:20.077Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

12 - Mature Retributivism as Abolition

from Introduction to Part V: From Moral Psychology to Penal Abolition

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 May 2025

Alan Norrie
Affiliation:
University of Warwick
Get access

Summary

Mature retributivism from Chapters 7 and 8 involves a metaphysics and metapsychology of the animal that thinks and loves. Its moral psychology underpins deep or tendential penal abolition around five claims. First, mature retributivism is preferrable to punishment. It offers individual and social change rather than repetitive violence by means of a punitive response which fails to change behaviour. Second, vindictive, vindicative and validatory forms of state action are distinguished. Abolition delinks law’s morally vindicative power from punitive vindictiveness, aligning it with a broader moral validation. This allows perpetrators, victims and a community to deal with violation through reconciliation. Third, abolition involves dispositional and relational responsibility allowing the violator to own acts in a social setting rather than simply be blamed and punished for them. Fourth, while this looks unrealistic in the face of the ‘adverse experience’ (Kant 1993: 246) available in modern society around crime and punishment, it involves a real utopian argument based on real human ontology. Its underlying realism challenges proponents and critics to take seriously moral change and violation. It also suggests that the slogan ‘Abolition now!’ must distinguish an immanent truth from an imminent demand. Fifth, the violative and asymmetric relation between ‘a doer’ and a ‘done-to’ remains central to the abolitionist position requiring reconciliatory change at both individual and social levels.

Information

Type
Chapter
Information
Rethinking Criminal Justice
Punishment, Abolition and Moral Psychology
, pp. 273 - 298
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2025

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Book purchase

Temporarily unavailable

Accessibility standard: Unknown

Accessibility compliance for the PDF of this book is currently unknown and may be updated in the future.

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×