Editors’ Introduction to the Special Issue: The Virtues of Justice: Rethinking Crime and Punishment

• Author: Bruce A. Arrigo,Jenna-Mae Paz
• Published date: 01 July 2022
• Date: 01 July 2022
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/0306624X221104936
• Subject Matter: Introduction

https://doi.org/10.1177/0306624X221104936

International Journal of

Offender Therapy and

Comparative Criminology

2022, Vol. 66(9) 959 –961

© The Author(s) 2022

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DOI: 10.1177/0306624X221104936

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Introduction

Editors’ Introduction to the

Special Issue: The Virtues of

Justice: Rethinking Crime and

Punishment

Bruce A. Arrigo1 and Jenna-Mae Paz1

In this Special Issue of the Journal, an international assemblage of scholars and prac-

titioners revisit the problems posed by crime and punishment by emphasizing a unique

approach to the administration of justice. The uniqueness of this approach represents

the thematic focus of the Special Issue. In brief, the set of articles challenge the reader

to regard justice not as something that one does to offenders or law violators through

the meting out of proportionate punishments. Instead, justice is recognized as an ethic

in which decisions about the proper course of correctional treatment, offender therapy,

or even disciplinary sanction are filtered, first and foremost, through the philosophy of

virtue (e.g., Adshead, 2014; Arrigo et al., 2011; Roy, 2017).

Researchers note that the disciplines of psychology and psychiatry, criminology

and law, social work and offender rehabilitation increasingly have turned to the phi-

losophy of virtue and the ethics of justice to address a range of concerns about crime

and punishment (Arrigo & Sellers, 2022; Sellers & Arrigo, 2021). Several recent

examples include the jurisprudence of dignity (Henry, 2011), the criminology of trust

(Walgrave et al., 2021), the phenomenology of redemption (Pycroft & Bartollas,

2021), and the psychology of forgiveness (Lacey & Pickard, 2015). In each of these

instances, “well-being [is the] object of science: How science should define well-

being, how it should measure it and the role of philosophy of in all of this [are central]”

(Alexandrova, 2018, p. ix). How do the assembled articles in this Special Issue show-

case the importance of this philosophy as a basis to rethink crime and punishment?

In their article on practice frameworks in correctional and forensic mental health,

Ward and McDonald outline the function of such frameworks, examine the role of

their underlying ethical assumptions, and explain the importance of these normative

1UNC Charlotte, NC, USA

Corresponding Author:

Bruce A. Arrigo, UNC Charlotte, 9201 University City Blvd, Charlotte, NC 28223-0001, USA.

Email: barrigo@uncc.edu

1104936IJOXXX10.1177/0306624X221104936International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative CriminologyArrigo and Paz

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