Rethinking Criminal Justice
Punishment, Abolition and Moral Psychology

Norrie develops a fundamentally different mature retributive theory that could solve the intractable problems of crime and punishment.

Alan Norrie (Author)

9781108478878, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 5 June 2025

346 pages
25 x 17.8 x 2.4 cm, 0.77 kg

For 200 years, the penal equation 'crime plus blame equals punishment' has meant prison crises, a permanent crime problem, violent and damaged lives. The retributive theory of punishment supports this; fully developed, it could transform it. A moral psychology of violation distinguishes primitive and mature retributivism, explaining punishment's necessary failure and guilt, forgiveness and reconciliation's power. 'Atonement' means both punitive 'payback' and being 'at one' again with self and others. Reconciliation for offender, victim and society leads to punishment's deep, tendential abolition.  Intellectually innovative and bold, Alan Norrie's mature retributivism is rooted in human ontology, in the metaphysical animal that thinks and loves. Speaking to law, philosophy, criminology and criminal justice, his moral psychology considers victims who victimise, grief at violation, denial and mourning and the loving prison. Exploring ethics, psychoanalysis, social theory, testimony and film, his psychologically developed moral philosophy challenges basic assumptions about punishment and the penal equation.

1. Criminal justice and the metaphysical animal
Part I. Two Routes Beyond Political Theory: 2. Political theory and young Hegel's critique of punishment
3. Victims who victimise: guilt in political theory and moral psychology
Part II. Moral Psychology, Law and the Metaphysics of Forgiveness: 4. Love, guilt and forgiveness
5. Law and the metaphysics of forgiveness
Part III. The Animal that Thinks and Loves: On Guilt: 6. 'Feeling rotten': beyond philosophy's limit
7. Two accounts of guilt in Freud
8. Primitive and mature guilt: taking retributivism seriously
Part IV. Three Case Studies: Denial, Mourning, Freedom, Reconciliation: 9. Denying guilt, taking responsibility: on Joshua Oppenheimer's The Act of Killing
10.Violation, mourning and melancholia: on Patricio Guzmán's Nostalgia for The Light
11. Guilt, freedom and reconciliation: on Jimmy Boyle's A Sense of Freedom
Part V. Mature Retributivism as Abolition: 12. Mature retributivism as abolition.

Subject Areas: Criminal law & procedure [LNF]