Retributive Sentencing, Multiple Offenders, and Bulk Discounts
Mark D. White (ed), Retributivism: Essays in Theory and Policy (OUP 2011): 212-31, April, 2011
37 Pages Posted: 16 Dec 2012 Last revised: 25 Oct 2013
Date Written: 2011
Abstract
This paper concerns how retributive sentencing theory would have us sentence individuals who have been convicted of multiple offenses. A purely consecutive approach to sentencing would have multiple offenders serve the sentences for their crimes one right after the other, with no "bulk discounts." A purely concurrent approach would have multiple offenders serve only the sentence for their most serious offense. This would, in effect, grant multiple offenders substantial bulk discounts. I argue that neither approach is satisfactory and defend a moderate consecutivism, according to which multiple offenders should receive bulk discounts but should have to serve longer sentences than purely concurrent approaches would require of them. I then illustrate my proposal by considering different kinds of multiple offenders.
Keywords: retributivism, sentencing, multiple offenders, bulk discounts
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