Against Legal Punishment: An Argument for Abolition

I defend Abolitionism, the view that legal punishment is almost never morally justified. My argument in one sentence is: legal punishment intends harm and this aspect of it is almost never morally justified. Many punishment theorists think that Abolitionism is deeply at odds with common sense and that it’s subject to decisive objections. Against this, I argue that the standard objections to Abolitionism fail and that commonsense judgments support the view. Along the way, I defend novel positions in some longstanding debates in criminal law theory and ethics, including debates about the significance of moral desert and the relevance of intentions to ethics.