Civic Punishment

Abstract

This chapter argues that in a democratic republic of free and equal citizens, criminal punishment can be adequately justified only if it can be portrayed as a civic duty that offenders ought to undertake. The authors sketch the key features of such a democratic republic, and of the kind of criminal law to which its members can properly subject themselves and each other. A crucial aspect of such a criminal law is that citizens have active roles to play in its enterprise, including the roles of offender and convicted offender, who should be seen as citizens who have, through their offending, acquired distinctive new civic responsibilities to their fellow citizens. This is an idealized conception of what criminal law ought to be, but it is an important ideal, since it shows how criminal law could treat offenders with the respect that should still be due to them as citizens.