More than merely preparatory notes on the law of attempt

Being limited to only one-thousand words on this vast topic proved tight. This paper addresses the main justifications for punishing attempts.

'Inchoate crimes cause no direct harm to victims. Therefore it is strange that we punish such behaviour.' Discuss in relation to the law of attempt.

More than merely preparatory notes on the law of attempt

Inchoate offences are incomplete crimes. Consummation of the crime may fail for a number of reasons (miscarry, prevention, change of mind, impossibility) and since these offences are not concerned with harm caused by the defendant (indeed in many cases there will be none) the attribution of criminal liability and, hence, punishment stands in strong need of justification. This paper will briefly examine the common justifications for punishing attempts and provide some examples where these are insufficient.

Moral blameworthiness

The Law Reform Commission noted how “the moral culpability of the author of a failed attempt at a crime can be on a par with that of the successful criminal”. It may be merely a matter of luck that the attempter failed to harm the victim. In these instances conviction for an inchoate offence promotes equality of treatment between those whose conduct accomplishes criminal results and those whose similar conduct fails because of a fortuity (T.K.H. Ill, ‘Reforming the Law of Inchoate Crimes’ (1973)). “The attemptor of murder not escape liability solely because of fortuitous non-occurrence of death” (Law Reform Commission).

Furthermore, there are practical (consequentialist) advantages to punishing such morally blameworthy people in absence of harm: namely rehabilitation and incapacitation of these wrong-thinking individuals who might otherwise harm society. The deterrent effect is also a compelling argument. In any case it is clear that those who attempt to commit a crime but, for reasons beyond their control, fail are just as morally blameworthy as someone who succeeds in his attempt. Herring refers to these as complete attempts.

There are logical limitations to the extent of attempts which may be justified by moral blameworthiness: if punishment is justified on the basis of moral blameworthiness alone then there should be an exception for punishing attempts where the defendant (of his own locomotion) abandons the attempt. A person who abandons his attempt is not as morally culpable as one who chooses to complete it, however there is currently no authority to suggest that he would be acquitted of an attempt. This is inconsistent with the premise of punishment for moral blameworthiness.

Here it is appropriate to draw a distinction between two types of attempts: complete attempts and incomplete attempts. A complete attempt is committed when the defendant did everything within his power to commit the substantive offence i.e. not only were his actions more than merely preparatory, they were so extensive that they would have brought the offence to completion (e.g. D aims his gun at V, pulls the trigger but V ducks at the last minute and so avoids the bullet). In such cases we can be sure that the defendant would have committed the crime and, on the moral blameworthiness principle, it would be appropriate to punish him. However, there is another breed of attempt: incomplete attempts, where the crime did not complete because it lacked some action on the defendant’s part. This may be either because he had not performed the act yet or because he was prevented (e.g. by a policeman holding his arm before he shot the victim). In these cases the court cannot be certain that the defendant would have continued the crime to completion. Furthermore the incompleteness may demonstrate a wavering attitude or lack of determination to commit the crime, in which case punishment for moral blameworthiness is inappropriate. It may also demonstrate the defendant’s ineptitude. In each of these cases it is unnecessary to incapacitate the defendant to protect society (he has shown that he either does not have the disposition or the aptitude of a dangerous criminal).

Harm

The foremost authority advocating the irregularity of punishing inchoate offences is Mill’s harm principle: (simply) that acts which cause harm should be punished. Clearly the punishment of attempts which cause no harm to the victim sits uncomfortably with this principle. However, there are some attempts which (despite their failure) do cause harm to the victim. It is justified in the harm-centred conception of the criminal law to punish these. The Law Reform Commission comments on this: “If a person learns of an attempt on their life they will feel shock and fear and so on. They have been in a real sense ‘harmed’.”

Creation of risk

There is an assumption that attempts result from the defendant creating a risk that the substantive offence would be committed (and not consummating it). Punishment for creation of this risk is another compelling argument. “...attempting a crime risks that crime being completed and that in striving to prevent that crime it should be sought to deter the attempting of the crime whether such an attempt will prove successful or not” (Law Reform Commission) Thus, if the aim is to prevent certain types of harm, then it is rational to prohibit risking that harm as well as causing it. If the law of attempts were to be abolished it would act as an incentive for people to try to commit crime and the risk of crimes being consummated would peak.

However, risk-minimalisation does not provide complete justification for all attempted crimes: it follows that if attempts causing a risk of the crime are punishable, then attempts which do not create a risk of crime (i.e. impossible crimes which due to the defendant’s ineptitude, legal or physical impossibility could never consummate) should not attract criminal liability. The criminal law’s main aim is crime-minimalisation; there is no need to punish acts that do not result in crime.

Practical efficacy

Practical operation of the police is another compelling argument. Criminal liability should be attached to attempts so that the police are permitted to arrest someone who is about to commit an offence, rather than having to wait until the offence has been committed (and the harm caused). But we must also consider the consequences of this practice. A person who is in the process of committing a crime has no incentive to abandon his attempt as he will nevertheless attract the same level of culpability as had he completed it (e.g. If D shoots at V and misses, he may as well have another shot!). This argument has been criticised as it presumes that all criminal actors have knowledge of the criminal law (similar to that of a second-year law student).

Conclusion

Each individual justification for punishing attempts does not conclusively justify punishment for all forms of attempt. However, collectively the justifications successfully provide arguments for punishing all of the aforementioned types of attempt. There is strong opinion that in practice punishments for an attempt should, nevertheless, be less severe than those for substantive offences. This is perhaps a more arguable area of the law of attempts, to be considered in a later paper.

Putting Punishment on the Gallows

This Law and Ethics module paper received a first. It was written in response to the following statement:

“It is not permissible for the state to punish people. Punishment cannot be morally justified...”

The paper argues that while consequentialist justifications are often claimed for punishment, the real rationale behind punishment is found in the retributivist school of thought.

Putting Punishment on the Gallows

Having escaped formal definition, a sufficient description of punishment may be inferred from Hart’s proposed requirements of punishment[1]: punishment is an infliction of suffering, sanctioned by the state, upon an individual in response to a crime for which he is culpable. The need to justify punishment arises because it involves the infliction of suffering upon an individual: it “cripples people…”[2] and “commits the state to the barbarity of deliberately damaging people’s lives”[3]. It has even been described as “an extraordinary abomination”[4]. And so the pressure to justify punishment in such circumstances is considerable.

There are two common ideological perspectives on the institution of punishment: consequentialism and retributivism. This paper will propose that pursuing a beneficial outcome (consequentialism) is not a morally legitimate reason to inflict harm upon an individual; however to punish a convicted person because he is morally culpable (retributivism) is.

- Consequentialism -

Consequentialism is a utilitarian perspective. The utilitarian philosophy claims simply “that an action is justified according to whether it maximises happiness or utility, as against other available options”[5]. With respect to punishment, it will be justified if the benefit it brings to society and the convicted individual is greater than any detriment it causes. There are three aims which are commonly used to justify punishment, all seemingly beneficial outcomes. Therefore to justify punishment the following must be proved: firstly that punishment is effective at bringing about one of these purported ends; and secondly that the benefit from doing so outweighs any detrimental consequences.

Incapacitation

Incapacitation aims to “deprive offenders of the power of doing future mischief.”[6] The most economical way of achieving this is to disable “known criminals and recidivists via incarceration or even death” (Wilson 1975)[7] which explains why incarceration has become the most common form of incapacitation.

It is far less likely that an offender can continue to harm society while incarcerated,[8] therefore it can be said that incarceration is effective in achieving its purported aim of disabling criminals. However there are claims that the benefits it brings to society do not outstrip the costs. The first of these is the inability of incarceration to prevent crime in the long term: criminals are only in custody for a finite period of time and may acquire new skills during their stay in prison (sometimes referred to as the university of crime) so that they may pose a greater threat to society in future[9], such is demonstrated by recidivism rates. Furthermore there is a considerable monetary cost to society of institutionalised incarceration, which may further offset the benefits to society.[10]

If proven that incarceration is actually effective in incapacitating criminals the first requirement (that punishment benefits society) will be fulfilled. However due to the ineffectiveness of incarceration in the long-run at preventing crime and the economic cost involved it is arguable that the benefits to society are outweighed by the costs, and therefore incarceration cannot be justified on consequentialist grounds. The need to incapacitate known criminals is one of the more compelling arguments for punishment; it is the means of incapacitation (i.e. incarceration) that attracts criticism.

Deterrence

Deterrence aims to reduce crime by assigning a cost to an unlawful act which functions as a disincentive to commit that crime. The cost involved is the threat of future punishment; an individual knows that if they commit a certain crime they will be subject to a certain cost.

The logical argument is strong: an individual is less likely to pursue a criminal course of action if the cost of doing so is great. However, the practice assumes that criminals are rational actors and only choose to commit a crime after careful weighing up of the costs and benefits; a notion which is untrue for many criminals (e.g. crimes of passion).[11] The argument that ‘rational’ criminals will be deterred has some persuasiveness. The problem with justifying deterrence in this way is that it is difficult to obtain data to prove both its effectiveness.[12]

Set aside this question of effectiveness and one will find the moral question is more disturbing. Let us assume for a moment that punishment is proved to be an effective deterrent. “Can an argument from deterrence alone justify in any sense the infliction of pain on a criminal?”[13] Barnett presents a compelling argument that it cannot: if punishment is inflicted upon an individual for the sole purpose of teaching society a lesson it is not done as a proportionate response to the crime; the crime merely serves as an excuse to make an example of the individual.[14]

A logical extrapolation can be made: if deterrence is the ultimate end of all punishment then it matters not whether the individual subjected to the punishment is guilty or innocent; all that is required is that the public perceive him to be guilty and witness him being punished as a consequence. This will have the desired deterrent effect. A wholesome pursuit of deterrence commits us to punishing the innocent in pursuit of ‘greater good’ for society.

Retributivists argue that this is an absurdly immoral practice: it is not inhuman nature to punish a person who does not deserve to be punished. The roman maxim ‘nulla poena sine leges, nulla poena sine crimen’ illustrates this.[15] “The utilitarian might respond to this claim by insisting that such cases cannot arise, since by definition, punishment is not punishment of the innocent.”[16]

Further criticism is that in pursuing deterrence one is not obliged to act proportionally, indeed proportionality may be counterproductive to achieving this end: “If the apparent magnitude, or rather value of [the] pain be greater than the apparent magnitude or value of the pleasure or good [the perpetrator] expects to be the consequence of the act, he will be absolutely prevented from performing it”[17] This suggests that the pain must be greater than the benefit in order to deter absolutely; the punishment is therefore disproportionately more severe than the crime – a notion which casts severe doubts on the morality of its application and is strongly contested by retributivists.

Rehabilitation

Rehabilitation of a criminal means a “change in his mental habitus so that he will not offend again”.[18] Historically it was considered that rehabilitation should be the sole purpose of punishment.[19]

Limited success was demonstrated with programmes “directed at specific offender sub-groups”[20]. However, in practice not only was the commonest form of punishment (incarceration) incapable of succinctly accommodating rehabilitative programmes[21], but that incarceration actually had the opposite effect of rehabilitating.[22]

Clearly there is doubt as to the effectiveness of rehabilitation. However, assuming that rehabilitation is effective, the second (more pertinent) issue is whether rehabilitation (alone) is sufficient to justify punishment.

Again the issue with this justification is that rehabilitators are under no obligation to act proportionally, meaning that rehabilitative programmes resulted in disproportionately severe and unjust ‘treatments’. Treatment in rehabilitation, it was argued, fell outside the definition of punishment and often entailed measures which were far worse than those used in punishing.[23] This practice was defended by the argument that the ‘patients’ are not being punished at all. Retributive critics argue staunchly against such a proposition which imposes on offenders harsher punishments than their just deserts in the name of treatment.

Evaluation of consequentialist justifications

In summary, consequentialist justifications, which aim to maximise beneficial consequences, draw justification from Mill’s harm principle: “the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community against his will, is to prevent harm to others”.[24] This principle seemingly justifies all uses of coercive force where the benefits to society outweigh the costs to the individual.

Fundamental to justifying punishment in this way is the need to prove that the measures are effective and efficacious in bringing about the purported benefits. This is an argument which proves difficult (for the reasons above) most notably for deterrence and rehabilitation, and to a limited extent for incapacitation (due to its temporary and ‘dehabilitative’ nature). Furthermore, it is arguable that if disproportionate punishments become commonplace in society (such as for the purposes of deterrence or rehabilitation) then this is a detrimental consequence to the society and therefore can no longer draw its justification from Mill’s harm principle. Immanuel Kants’s theory follows from this: “punishment can never be administered merely as a means for promoting another good”; it should be “pronounced over all criminals proportionate to their internal wickedness”[25] - a quantity that may be approximated by society’s sense of moral outrage over the crime – a retributive concept.

In any event there is considerable evidence to suggest that although consequentialist aims are commonly referred to as reasons for punishing an individual, they are not the actual rationale but merely excuses for serving a criminal his just-deserts.

- Retributivism -

Retributivism, in contrast with consequentialism, proposes that punishment is a legitimate end. Sometimes referred to as the ‘just deserts’ principle, retributivist punishment will deliver to a guilty individual punishment proportionate to his blameworthiness. “Punishment is an end in itself and needs no further justification”[26], it is a “fitting response to the offender’s wrongdoing”[27]. “When a person is unjustly harmed through assault or robbery, people typically experience a strong desire to punish the offender. From a psychological point of view, what is the source of this motivation, the justification for this behavior?” and more specifically, why does society punish?[28]

Historically the penal system may have derived from biblical ‘lex talonis’ teachings that punishment became directly proportional to the crime. It has evolved into the current system where crimes are graded in severity and assigned fitting punishments. In this day retributive punishment strikes a balance between the culpability of the offender and the harm the crime caused the victim and society.

One explanation for this seemingly irrational practice is the denunciation theory: punishment is justified through its role in denouncing the criminal’s wrongdoing, “forcefully voicing the community’s disapproval and rejection of his conduct.”[29] It is a legitimate way for the “feeling of hatred and the desire for vengeance… [that crime] excites in healthily constituted minds”[30] to be dispelled. Per Lord Denning: “the ultimate justification of any punishment is not that it is a deterrent but that it is the emphatic denunciation by the community of a crime”[31]

It is argued in opposition of this that in order to convey a message of denunciation retributivism need not be punitive harsh-treatment. Lesser measures would suffice to communicate the message and so harsh-treatment is disproportionate and unjustified. However, the rationale for retributive punishment is to quell the moral outrage in society of an individual’s behaviour. Clearly a symbolic punishment would not achieve this purpose. Therefore proportionate punishment is necessary.

Another argument critiques the lex talonis notion that punishment should mirror the crime. It suggests that since the state cannot inflict ‘an eye for an eye’ type punishment in practice (it may be possible to murder a murderer; and it could potentially be construed as possible to rape a rapist; but what precisely would we do to punish a serial killer?!) it instead imposes other punishments which purport to be proportionate to the crime. However, there is no non-arbitrary way of attributing the punishment to the crime[32] (how many years of servitude is a human life to be gauged at?).

These arguments result in the conclusion that retributivism may impose punishments which are much harsher than necessary. What if, for instance, a lesser penalty would be sufficient to rehabilitate a convict; inflicting upon him a harsher sentence would be unnecessary. The answer for this is that retributivism does not draw justification from the fact that the sentences it imposes are necessary; it draws justification from the fact that the sentences are deserved.

Punishment that is proportionate to blameworthiness maintains the balance in the community.[33] When an individual commits a crime he upsets the moral balance between himself and law-abiding citizens by doing something that they would not. He gains an unfair or illicit advantage and incurs a debt to society (becomes a free-rider). Retributive punishment restores that balance by imposing punishment that is equal in magnitude to the debt society incurred.

It follows from this that it becomes a convicts ‘right’ to be punished. Punishment will repay his debt to society, annul the wrong and repair the moral damage (in the way that compensation would repair physical damage in the law of Tort) so that he may emerge from punishment without unspent guilt.[34]

It is further suggested that repairing the moral damage inflicted on the victim is a legitimate way to justify the practice of punishment as “it is unfair to expect victims of criminal aggression to bear the cost of their victimization.”[35] This argument is particularly strong for crimes of a heinous nature (e.g. assault, rape etc.) however it could be questioned in the two following instances: (i) cases of lesser offences which do not cause such moral damage[36] (“such as the theft by a relatively poor person from a wealthy person”[37]); and (ii) it also fails to account for victimless crimes, where there is no specific moral damage to be repaired. Rather than being a criticism of the system of retributive punishment it raises a pertinent question: should such less-serious conduct be criminalised? In the former instance of minor offences against the person civil liability may suffice to repair the moral damage; and in the latter it questions whether victimless crimes (e.g. personal drug use) should be fall within the scope of the law, or whether they fall within a realm of private morality with which the law is not concerned (a question which ought to be the title of another essay!).

In criticising retributivism it may be argued that since it serves no material purpose then punishment is merely a lust for revenge. However it is clear that the desire to repair moral damage, or the lust for revenge (or howsoever one phrases it) is evident in our human nature.[38] Further, it is suggested that “society as well as the victim requires the just deserts punishment; unless the punishment is imposed, a real feeling of incompleteness lingers, and there is a sense that justice has not been done”[39]. These feelings will contribute to doubts in the credibility of the justice system and feelings that the system is failing. Any governing state is obliged to be sympathetic to these emotions exhibited by the public and must give effect to the public’s wishes that ‘justice be done’; indeed it would be wrong for it not to. Failure to do so would be an action beyond its authority since a ‘legitimate authority’ only exists because its policy is agreeable to the general population.

Argued in contrary to this is the notion that retributivism purports to render punishment to the morally blameworthy; however punishment is in fact only rendered to those who break a law of the land. Since laws of the land do not always reflect public morality the outcome is people getting punished where they are not morally blameworthy – an unjust result under retributivism. This however, only serves to strengthen the legitimate authority argument raised above: that a legitimate authority must give effect to the public’s desire to see only morally blameworthy people punished, therefore it should adopt legislation so that the criminal law finds morally blameworthy people guilty of an offence and capable of being punished.

Conclusion

Initially the justification for retributivism is difficult to grasp; it seems like an arbitrary infliction of suffering that serves no purpose other than to punish for the sake of punishment. In spite of this, retributivist considerations appear to be the governing rationale for all punishments. Rational arguments will only partially explain punishment for retributivist purposes, but once we realise that ingrained in all of society is the desire to see morally repugnant offenders suffer for their wrongdoing the rational arguments become of less importance. For consequentialism, where punishment is a means of reaching an end, justification is only found where the purported end is legitimate (i.e. beneficial to society), and the means successfully bring about this end: the end justifies the means. This does not mean that none of the material benefits (incapacitation, deterrence and rehabilitation) can be reaped by society; many argue in favour of a pluralist system where retributive goals are pursued primarily, and consequentialist ends are achieved by ‘piggy-backing’ (a happy coincidence). In retributivism punishment is the end. Why? Because a wrongdoer deserves to be punished; and society wishes this to be so.

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[1] Hart, Causation in the Law (Clarendon Press 1959) Chapter 4

[2] Gross, A Theory of Criminal Justice (Oxford University Press, New York 1979) 375

[3] Gardner, Offences and Defences (Oxford University Press, Oxford 2007) 203

[4] Ashworth, Andrew and Wasik, Martin (eds), Fundamentals of Sentencing Theory: Essays in Honour of Andrew von Hirsch (Clarendon, Oxford 1998) 32

[5] Wood, 'Punishment: Consequentialism' (2010) 5/6 Philosophy Compass 3

[6] Oppenheimer, The Rationale of Punishment (University of London Press, London 1913) 255

[7] Wilson, Thinking About Crime (Basic Books, New York 1975)

[8] supra Barnett (1977)

[9] Punishment can do nothing to provide him with the skills needed to survive in the outside world. In prison he learns not to repeat the mistake that led to his capture. The convict emerges better trained and highly motivated to continue a criminal career.

[10] supra Wood (consequentialism), 8

[11] Carlsmith, 'Why Do We Punish? Deterrence and Just Deserts as Motives for Punishment' (2002) 83 Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 2, 285

[12] supra Wood (consequentialism), 16

[13] Barnett, 'Restitution: A New Paradigm of Criminal Justice' (1977) 87 Ethics 4

[14] ibid: “…the criminal act becomes the occasion of, but not the reason for, the punishment. In this way, the actual crime becomes little more than an excuse for punishing.”

[15] Latin: ‘no punishments outside the law, no punishments except for a crime’

[16] Quinton, On Punishment, and other articles collected in H.B. Acton, The Philosophy of Punishment (St. Martin's Press, Great Britain 1969) 58

[17] Bentham, Principles of penal law. In John Bowring (Ed.), The Works of Jeremy Bentham (Russell and Russell, New York 1962) 396

[18] supra Barnett (1977)

[19] supra Wood (Consequentialism), 26

[20] Zedner, Criminal Justice (Clarendon, Oxford 2004) 97

[21] supra Barnett (1977): “[prisons] are judged by their ability to keep the prisoners within the walls and to keep incidents of violence within the prison to a minimum; as a result, discipline is the main concern… there is no institutional incentive for the prisoner to improve himself”

[22] supra Zedner (2004), 97: It was profoundly “dehabilitative”.

[23] Golash, The Case Against Punishment (New York University Press, New York 2005) 190: “A Clockwork Orange, parodying the use of aversion therapy, was one dramatic example.”

[24] Mill, On Liberty (Originally published 1859, Dent, London 1972) ch. 1 para. 9

[25] Kant, 'The science of right' (1952) 42 Great books of the Western world, 397

[26] supra Carlsmith, 284

[27] supra Barnett (1977)

[28] supra Carlsmith, 284

[29] supra Wood (Non-connsequentialism), 2

[30] Cottingham, 'The Varieties of Retribution' (1979) 29 Philosophical Quarterly 238-246,

[31] ibid, 245

[32] supra Barnett (1977): “The appeal to proportionality was one of the early attempts to come to grips with deficiencies in the paradigm of punishment. It was doomed to failure, for there is no objective standard by which punishments can be proportioned to fit the crime.”

[33] supra Kant (1952), 472-8

[34] supra Golash (2005), 50

[35] Dr Bedau, Hugo Adam 'Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Punishment' <http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/punishment/> accessed 21 December 2012:

[36] Hampton, 'Correcting Harms versus Righting Wrongs: The Goal of Retribution' (1992) 39 UCLA Law Review : 1659-1702

[37] Duff, 'Penal Communications: Recent Work in the Philosophy of Punishment' (1996) 20 Crime and Justice: A Review of Recent Research, 37

[38] supra Carlsmith, 296: “Recently, a number of writers have outlined the core of just deserts thinking and suggested that it is consistent with what we can observe of everyday, everyperson, moral thinking (Finkel, 1997; Goldberg, Lerner, & Tetlock, 1999; Morris, 1968; Strawson, 1974; von Hirsch, 1998).”

[39] (ibid), 297

Acknowledgements

Books

–      Ashworth, Andrew and Wasik, Martin (eds), Fundamentals of Sentencing Theory: Essays in Honour of Andrew von Hirsch (Clarendon, Oxford 1998)

–      Bentham, Principles of penal law. In John Bowring (Ed.), The Works of Jeremy Bentham (Russell and Russell, New York 1962)

–      Gardner, Offences and Defences (Oxford University Press, Oxford 2007)

–      Golash, The Case Against Punishment (New York University Press, New York 2005)

–      Gross, A Theory of Criminal Justice (Oxford University Press, New York 1979)

–      Hart, Causation in the Law (Clarendon Press 1959)

–      Kant, 'The science of right' (1952) 42 Great books of the Western world

–      Mill, On Liberty (Originally published 1859, Dent, London 1972)

–      Oppenheimer, The Rationale of Punishment (University of London Press, London 1913)

–      Quinton, On Punishment, and other articles collected in H.B. Acton, The Philosophy of Punishment (St. Martin's Press, Great Britain 1969)

–      Wilson, Thinking About Crime (Basic Books, New York 1975)

–      Zedner, Criminal Justice (Clarendon, Oxford 2004)

Articles

–      Barnett, 'Restitution: A New Paradigm of Criminal Justice' (1977) 87 Ethics 4

–      Carlsmith, 'Why Do We Punish? Deterrence and Just Deserts as Motives for Punishment' (2002) 83 Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 2

–      Cottingham, 'The Varieties of Retribution' (1979) 29 Philosophical Quarterly 238-246

–      Duff, 'Penal Communications: Recent Work in the Philosophy of Punishment' (1996) 20 Crime and Justice: A Review of Recent Research

–      Hampton, 'Correcting Harms versus Righting Wrongs: The Goal of Retribution' (1992) 39 UCLA Law Review

–      Wood, 'Punishment: Consequentialism' (2010) 5/6 Philosophy Compass 3

Other

–      Dr Bedau, Hugo Adam 'Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Punishment' <http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/punishment/> accessed 21 December 2012