Crime, Responsibility and Institutional Design

Abstract

This paper addresses certain aspects of two questions to which Philip Pettit’s work has made an important contribution. First, given both our normative commitments and our understanding of human psychology and the social world, how can we best design institutions of criminal justice? Second, what role does the concept of human responsibility play in the legitimation of criminalizing power, and how do normative and social analyses of responsibility interact in contributing to our understanding of this question?

Keywords: responsibility, criminal justice, legitimation, coordination, institutional design