Injustice of Punishment

Bruce N. Waller is professor of philosophy at Youngstown State University. He is the author or editor of fourteen books, including Against Moral Responsibility (2011) and The Stubborn System of Moral Responsibility (2015), as well as numerous journal articles.

• 1. Beyond the Moral Responsibility System2. The Unjust Necessity of Punishment3. Tychonic Moral Responsibility4. The Strike-Back Roots of Retributive Justice5. A Just World, Moral Responsibility, and the Justice of Punishment6. Does Denying Moral Responsibility Threaten Dignity, Rights, and Innocence?7. Empirical Examination of Moral Responsibility8. How Does Belief in Moral Responsibility Undermine Personal Dignity?9. Efforts to Make Punishment Just10. Is Therapy an Alternative?11. The No-Blame Systems Model12. No Limits on No-Blame13. A Universal No-Blame System14. Conclusion

"Like all of his books, this one is philosophically up to date, admirably engages with a very broad range of literature outside philosophy, and expresses Waller's deeply caring attitude about human beings and vehement drive to correct social evils . . . The Injustice of Punishment is an important, original, and thoughtful contribution to the assessment of punishment, and in particular to the question of whether we would be better off here without the belief in moral responsibility." – Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews"With his characteristic verve and originality, Waller expands on his previous work on moral responsibility with a frontal attack against the notion that punishment can ever be just. To all those who eschew supernatural explanations, this book is a must-read." – Mark Bernstein, Purdue University, USA"In this book Waller honestly and conscientiously faces up to the unpleasant conclusion that increasingly seems unavoidable: that although no one deserves punishment, we cannot do away with it. No one interested in the debate should be without this book." – Michael Louis Corrado, University of North Carolina Law School, USA