Kant on Punishment: A Coherent Mix of Deterrence and Retribution?

Abstract Although Kant is often regarded an extreme retributivist regarding judicial punishment, the need to deter crime also plays a significant role in his theory of criminal law. Kant's special way of combining deterrence and retribution, however, must be distinguished from others that are less plausible. Kant thought that criminal punishments should be designed to match the victim's empirically discernible losses in degree and kind, except when this would be impossible or degrading; for courts cannot measure the ultimate moral desert of criminals. Arguably, Kant's justification of the practice of punishment is not deeply retributive, but punishment is also not a mere disincentive in a ‘price’ system of social control. For better or worse, punishment tends to convey a public message of moral disapproval of the criminal conduct; and, though this de facto expressive function is not for Kant, the purpose or justification of punishment, it may help explain his concern for making the severity of punishments proportional to the gravity of crimes and his refusal to allow exceptions for merely pragmatic reasons.