Moral Desert: A Critique was published by the University Press of America (a subsidiary of Rowman and Littelfield) in 2010.

• It challenges the views of recent defenders of the retributive theory of punishment.

• It provides a detailed--and practical--account of consequentialist punishment.

• It is lucidly written with realistic examples and actual case studies.

Moral Desert critically examines the ways in which we assess what people deserve for their good and bad actions. It concludes that, for a number of reasons, such assessments are too problematic to be a secure ground for judgements about how people ought to be treated. It also suggests what concepts and methods may be used instead in the theory of punishment and the determination of distributive justice, as well as how personal morality can dispense with the notion of desert and downplay the role of blame in interpersonal relations.

Read the book's opening section

Read a short stand-alone piece adapted from the book

Determinism and Utilitarianism: A Debate

Order a copy on Amazon

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