Précis of Rejecting Retributivism: Free Will, Punishment, and Criminal Justice

The dual aims of Rejecting Retributivism: Free Will, Punishment, and Criminal Justice are to argue against retributivism and to develop and defend a viable non-retributive alternative for addressing criminal behaviour that is both ethically defensible and practically workable. In the first half of the book, I develop six distinct arguments for rejecting retributivism, not the least of which is that it’s unclear that agents possess the kind of free will and moral responsibility needed to justify it. I also consider a number of alternatives to retributivism, including consequentialist deterrence theories, educational theories and communicative theories, and argue that they have ethical problems of their own. In the second half of the book, I then develop and defend my novel non-retributive approach, which I call the public health-quarantine model. The model draws on the public health framework and prioritizes prevention and social justice. I argue that it not only offers a stark contrast to retributivism, it also provides a more humane, holistic and effective approach to dealing with criminal behaviour, one that is superior to both retributivism and other leading non-retributive alternatives. Along the way, I also explore the relationship between free will and criminal law; identify and document the social determinants of criminal behaviour and argue that they are analogous to the social determinants of health; offer a number of specific policy proposals and prescriptions for implementing a public health approach to crime prevention; and defend a capabilities approach to social justice, arguing that it can serve as the moral foundation of my public health framework as well as being consistent with my free will skepticism – which maintains that who we are and what we do is ultimately the result of factors beyond our control (whether those be determinism, indeterminism, or luck), and because of this we are never morally responsible in the basic desert sense.