Beyond the Logos of Crime, Responsibility, and Punishment

• In Event: Penology panel

Abstract

Criminal law and justice theory, both orthodox and critical, has much to say about the virtues and vices of crime, responsibility, and punishment. The field is split between those that justify the rationality of the triad as a mechanism for social control and those that critique it. Their common ground is the logos of crime, responsibility, and punishment. In this paper, I seek to intervene on both sides of the split by considering what might lie beyond that problematic logos. This takes me, first, to the moral psychology of violation, and, second, to what working through violation might involve. I argue that the deeper truth of this has important implications for how we understand rationality in the context of violation and its repair.

Author

• Amanda Wilson, University of Warwick