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Not Just Desserts: A Republican Theory of Criminal Justice

Braithwaite, John
June 4, 2015

Source: (1990) Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 240p.

This essay aims to transcend the debate between theories of punishment with a comprehensive theory not only of punishment, but of criminal justice generally. The goal of criminal justice should be to maximize dominion, which is freedom, holistically conceived. A republican conception of freedom within a social world yields presumptions in favor of: parsimony, the checking of state power over individuals, reprobation, and reintegration of victims and offenders. Implications of this theory for the practice of justice id discussed.

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