Punishment & Redemption

• In Event: Roundtable: Redemptive Criminology: A Humanistic Response to Pycroft and Bartollas

Abstract

Perhaps the worthiest question before criminology – and also the precinct of perhaps our most calamitous failure - is the question of the purpose of action: what do we seek when we act in the name of justice? Punishment nets us little aside from more suffering. Rehabilitation and related ends are at best partial, and more often patchwork. Actuarial ends are hardly ends at all. Redemption, in contrast, seeks actualization through love toward a flourishing, a true eudaimon. This portion of the conversation will review the sixth chapter of Redemptive Criminology and examine it in terms of theorizing about love and justice (e.g., DeValve, 2015).

Author

• Michael John DeValve, Bridgewater State University