The Injustice of Punishment

This book offers original answers to the two toughest challenges facing the rejection of moral responsibility and retributive justice: If you reject moral responsibility, what do you do about punishment? And if you reject the moral responsibility system and retributive justice, what workable alternative system will replace them? Drawing on extensive psychological studies, Waller argues that although we cannot eliminate punishment in the foreseeable future, it is better to honestly acknowledge that all punishment is fundamentally unjust. That acknowledgment spurs us to seek effective means of reducing the need for punishment and minimizing the inevitable harm involved in punitive processes.