Desert, Punishment, and Criminal Responsibility

The crucial element in any theory of punishment is its treatment of the matter of desert. For the retributivist, desert is the sole basis on which punishment properly is imposed; he is accordingly obliged to explain how desert attaches and, more particularly, how it is translated into a measurement of punishment. Those have proved to be difficult tasks. Objectors to the retributivist position not only question whether a person can be said to be guilty in the sense required by desert. They question also whether desert, if it is a meaningful concept, by itself justifies the deliberate infliction of pain; if pain itself is not a good and no good consequences are in view, they argue, the question can have only one answer. To fortify those questions, they challenge retributivists to make their position concrete and specify what punishment attaches by way of desert to specific crimes. 1