Bessette, Joseph
1 Articles at Lifeissues.net

Joseph Bessette is Alice Tweed Tuohy Professor of Government and Ethics at Claremont McKenna College, where he teaches courses on American institutions, ethics, and criminal justice. Among numerous other works on government and criminal justice, he is coauthor (with Edward Feser) of By Man Shall His Blood Be Shed: A Catholic Defense of Capital Punishment (Ignatius Press, 2017). He previously served in the Cook County (IL) State's Attorney's Office and was Deputy Director and Acting Director of the Bureau of Justice Statistics in the U.S. Department of Justice.

Articles

Fitting the Punishment to the Crime: The Justice of Contemporary Criminal Sentencing Laws

Were the criminal sentencing reforms that began in the 1970s too harsh? Rachel Barkow's new book says they were. But most Americans would likely call these changes progress: our worst offenders now get something closer to what they should get than in the days when the experts were more in charge of punishment. Perhaps the real question is whether we should ground our criminal law more on justice as retribution.

Date posted: 2020-01-04