The fundamental contrast between the ideas that punishment is morally justified because people have behaved wrongly (retributivist) and that punishment is morally justified only when it has good consequences (consequentialist/utilitarian) has long existed and most likely always will. Beginning in th[...]
Violent and property crime rates in all Western countries have been falling since the early and mid-1990s, after rising in the 1970s and 1980s. Few people have noticed the common patterns, and fewer have attempted to understand or explain them. Yet the implications are essential for thinking about c[...]