The Changing Purposes of Criminal Punishment: A Retrospective on the past Century and Some Thoughts about the Next

Abstract

Discussions of the textbook purposes of criminal punishmentretribution, deterrence, incapacitation, and rehabilitation' sometimes seem too abstract to matter. This Essay, however, examines two unmistakably consequential shifts in the stated objectives of punishment. It describes America's turn to rehabilitative goals early in the twentieth century, the persistence of these goals through most of the century, and the demise of rehabilitation and emergence of a "new penology" in the century's final quarter. It contends that both American revolutions in penal objectives were mistaken. Retribution, the purpose of punishment most disparaged from the beginning of the century through the end, merits recognition as the criminal law's central objective.