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Putting Proportional Punishment into Perspective

Coverdale, Helen Brown; (2024) Putting Proportional Punishment into Perspective. Criminal Law and Philosophy 10.1007/s11572-024-09736-5. (In press). Green open access

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Abstract

Much has been written about how we should understand proportional punishment. A standardised sentence may, in the presence of pre-existing disadvantage, produce morally significant additional harms. Others argue that modifying a standard punishment to avoid such harm is to show leniency in light of social disadvantage. I disagree: Where the standardised sentence can be amended to minimise unnecessary additional harms at a reasonable cost, while preserving a proportionate amount of punishment, the state has a duty to make the amendment. I articulate a partial reconstruction of proportionality calculations to put proportionality into perspective. Rather than disproportionate leniency, such variation is demanded by principles of political equality and by proportionality itself, if we take seriously the principle of punishing like cases alike.

Type: Article
Title: Putting Proportional Punishment into Perspective
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
DOI: 10.1007/s11572-024-09736-5
Publisher version: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11572-024-09736-5
Language: English
Additional information: Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
Keywords: Social Sciences, Law, Government & Law, Proportionate punishment, Penal equivalence, Structural injustice, Social disadvantage
UCL classification: UCL
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of S&HS
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of S&HS > Dept of Political Science
URI: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10198891
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