Atrocity Without Punishment - (Cultural Lives of Law) by Juan Espindola

About the Book

"Leniency might sometimes be the ethical response to atrocity. However, the more extraordinary an act of violence is, the greater the compulsion to severely punish the offender. The rationale is that the threat of harsh punishment will be more effective at preventing crime. At the same time, the notion that the criminal justice system is corrupt and ineffective has become commonplace. At the center of these conflicting trends is a puzzle that this book sets out to solve: what if punishment should not only be judged by its effectiveness, but also by its morality? Mexico's War on Drugs has unleashed an endless cycle of violence in the country. The resulting human toll is catastrophic. Atrocity Without Punishment advances ethically compelling reasons to impose lenient sentences on offenders involved in drugtrafficking, including many who commit serious offenses. Juan Espâindola argues that this is in fact a morally permissible, even obligatory, way to hold perpetrators accountable. From this vantage point, Espâindola problematizes the relationship between punishment and core political values such as legitimacy and justice. By challenging the criminal justice system in this way, he charts a path toward a more just criminal legal system that can muster the support of those who reject abolitionism"--

Book Synopsis

Leniency might sometimes be the ethical response to atrocity. However, the more extraordinary an act of violence is, the greater the compulsion to severely punish the offender. The rationale is that the threat of harsh punishment will be more effective at preventing crime. At the same time, the notion that the criminal justice system is corrupt and ineffective has become commonplace. At the center of these conflicting trends is a puzzle that this book sets out to solve: what if punishment should not only be judged by its effectiveness, but also by its morality?

Mexico's War on Drugs has unleashed an endless cycle of violence in the country. The resulting human toll is catastrophic. Atrocity Without Punishment advances ethically compelling reasons to impose lenient sentences on offenders involved in drugtrafficking, including many who commit serious offenses. Juan Espíndola argues that this is in fact a morally permissible, even obligatory, way to hold perpetrators accountable.

From this vantage point, Espíndola problematizes the relationship between punishment and core political values such as legitimacy and justice. By challenging the criminal justice system in this way, he charts a path toward a more just criminal legal system that can muster the support of those who reject abolitionism.

Review Quotes

"This is the only work that I know of that even attempts to put forward a constructive ethical and political proposal around Mexico's judicial normative order for the punishment for serious crimes. Written with an impressive combination of philosophical rigor, conceptual originality, and a well-informed and analytically acute understanding of the real-world conditions in which it is intervening, this book is everywhere and all-the-way-through admirably synthetic and precise, and it can serve well as a summary and synthesis of what, specifically, is the problem of criminal justice in contemporary Mexico." --Claudio Lomnitz, Columbia University and author of Sovereignty and Extortion: A New State Form in Mexico

"Through a careful consideration of Mexicos recent drug-related violence and incarceration, Atrocity Without Punishment craftily turns rational, practical, and necessary the apparent inexplicability of humanness and compassion." --Mauricio Tenorio-Trillo, The University of Chicago

About the Author

Juan Espíndola is Associate Professor at the Institute for Philosophical Research in the national Autonomous University of Mexico. He is the author of Transitional Justice After German Reunification (2015), and El hombre que lo podía todo (2004).