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Cover -- Half Title -- Series -- Title -- Copyright -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- 1 Legal Punishment and Crime Reduction: A Reassessment -- 2 In Search of the Retributive Element -- 3 Punishment and Moral Communication -- 4 Merging the Elements -- 5 Criminal Procedure and the Moral Authority to Punish -- 6 A Mixed Theory of Sentencing -- 7 User Fees and Collateral Legal Consequences -- 8 Toward Realism about the Prospects of State Punishment -- Bibliography -- Index.

The question addressed is whether prison inmates have a moral right of access to recreation, entertainment and diversion. The interests grounding such a right are first discussed. I then consider whether and to what extent a theory of legal punishment that incorporates both retributive and crime reduction aims, while giving primacy to the former, supports such a right. It is argued that such a theory supports a moral right to at least moderate levels of prisoner access to recreation, entertainment and diversion. Two further issues are then discussed - first, whether the state has an obligation to actually facilitate such access as opposed to simply not interfering with it, and second, what restrictions the state can reasonably impose on such access.

The issue discussed is whether policies of imposing increasingly lengthy prison sentences on serious criminal offenders reduce crime. The empirical evidence for the deterrence and incapacitation effects of incarceration is first examined and found to be of limited help in answering the question whether lengthy prison sentences reduce crime. Conceptual and normative analysis of deterrence and incapacitation suggest that we have little reason to believe that the general use of lengthy prison terms produces more good than harm for society, especially if the burdens of and alternatives to such prison terms are taken into account.

Presents the case against state-sponsored gambling on moral and other grounds; US. Encouragement of undesirable attitudes and character traits, social benefits and burdens, regressivity, and commercialization of play.

Given the desert-centric character of retributive penal theory, it seems odd that its supporters rarely discuss the undeserved losses and suffering of crime victims and the state's role in responding to them. This asymmetry in the desert-focus of retributive penal theory is examined and the likely arguments in support of it are found wanting. Particular attention is paid to the claim that offenders, rather than the state, should supply compensation to victims. Also, standard retributive accounts of why the deserving should be punished are shown to support state-supplied victim compensation.