Rejecting Retributivism by Gregg D. Caruso

In contrast, the United States has one of the highest incarceration rates in the world, but also a high crime rate and a high recidivism rate. Caruso points out that far from leading to an explosion in crime, Norway has one of the lowest crime rates in the world and one of the lowest recidivism rates. Norway has explicitly abandoned the punitive or retributive aim in favor of a wholly rehabilitative and preventive system, and one in which sentences are far lighter than in the U.S., and prisoners are treated far better. It would entail that sentences be much lighter and that prisoners be treated with dignity and respect, making their prison existence as close to a normal existence as possible, consistent with the goals of preventing crime.Ĭaruso uses Norway as a model for a better criminal justice system. It would, Caruso argues, lead us to adopt a system that is very different from the highly punitive system we have today. The public health model involves a focus on social justice and addressing the social inequities that lead people into criminal behavior, including inequality and discrimination.

Caruso shifts it entirely away from its current basis in retributive justice (the idea that punishment is justified because wrongdoers deserve it) to what he calls a “public health-quarantine model, in which the purpose of criminal justice is not punitive, but aims primarily at crime prevention. Email: Caruso, a philosophy professor at SUNY Corning, calls for a total revamping of the criminal justice system in the United States.

New York: Cambridge University Press, 2021. REJECTING RETRIBUTIVISM: FREE WILL, PUNISHMENT, AND CRIMINAL JUSTICE, by Gregg Caruso.

Rejecting Retributivism by Gregg D. Caruso