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Retributivist Justice and Dignity: Finding a Role for Economics in Criminal Justice

In: Law and Social Economics

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  • Mark D. White

Abstract

Mainstream economics has long struggled with crime, an intrinsically moralized area of law that resists attempts to reduce all goals and motivations within it to considerations of efficiency. Legal philosopher Jules Coleman, in response to an attempt to explain the category of crime in terms of transaction structures, wrote that “such a theory has no place for the moral sentiments and virtues appropriate to matters of crime and punishment: guilt, shame, remorse, forgiveness, and mercy, to name a few. A purely economic theory of crime can only impoverish rather than enrich our understanding of the nature of crime.”1 Without mentioning economics outright, legal scholar Herbert Morris bemoaned an approach to the law that “subordinates principle to the realization of social goals, a mode of thinking that focuses, not upon exculpation of the innocent and conviction of the guilty, that is, upon justice, but upon keeping social disruption at an acceptable level.”2

Suggested Citation

  • Mark D. White, 2015. "Retributivist Justice and Dignity: Finding a Role for Economics in Criminal Justice," Perspectives from Social Economics, in: Mark D. White (ed.), Law and Social Economics, chapter 0, pages 77-96, Palgrave Macmillan.
    • Handle: RePEc:pal:pfschp:978-1-137-44376-2_5
    DOI: 10.1057/9781137443762_5
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    Cited by:

    1. Mark D. White, 2018. "The neglected nuance of Beccaria’s theory of punishment," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 46(3), pages 315-329, December.

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