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What is a criminal label? What implications should criminal labels have (or not) for a person's future? To what extent are the long-term social effects considered as part of the sentence for a crime (e.g., not only considering sending a person to prison for 5 years but also considering how likely they are to be shunned socially or to be prevented from working certain kinds of jobs after their release)? How does the concept of dignity differ from the concept of rights? Are human rights infinitely valuable? Can a society that takes dignity seriously also allow for contempt? Under what conditions are rights forfeited by a person who commits a crime? And which rights are forfeited, and why? (For example, should the punishments for theft include a loss of the right to vote? Does the amount or kind of theft matter? Does it matter who the victims are, or how many victims there are?) For what kinds of crimes can we draw conclusions about a person's character? How much should we focus on punishment versus rehabilitation? How do honor, mercy, redemption, dignity, and contempt all relate to one another? How do we know when someone is truly reformed?
Khomotso is a South African and British trained lawyer who completed graduate work at Oxford and is now pursuing his PhD at Cambridge. His research focuses on the morality of criminal punishment, specifically the nature, ontology, and limits of criminal labelling. He currently teaches at the University of Cape Town and reads too much Roman politics and history in the late Republic and Early Imperial period in his spare time.
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