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Punishment and the Restoration of Rights

Hull University, UK

This article considers the attempt to justify punishment in terms of its ability to restore the breached rights of the crime victim. It examines the arguments put forward by Immanuel Kant and Georg Hegel and contends that their theories, having followed similar patterns linguistically and stylistically, each founder though for different reasons, at the key stage of demonstrating how punishment restores rights. Kant relies upon an inappropriate analogy while Hegel resorts to an over-extended metaphor. Neither demonstrates how punishment `undoes' the wrong inherent to crime. Within the contemporary literature there is a move from punishment as the restoration of right towards punishment as the reaffirmation of right. However, the article argues that the theories following this path fail to demonstrate why punishment is necessary to the reaffirmation of right. For the above reasons, there is, as yet, no satisfactory `justificatory' link between punishment and victims' rights.

Key Words: Hegel • Kant • punishment • rights • victim

Punishment & Society, Vol. 3, No. 4, 485-500 (2001)
DOI: 10.1177/14624740122228384


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