Chapter Four: Quarantine and the Problem of the Third Man

Abstract

Non-retributive attempts to justify punishment are open to some of the same objections that retributive attempts are subject to. Should we return to the preventive Quarantine Model? The attempt to justify that approach by analogy to medical quarantine fails. But Pereboom, Slobogin, and Robinson have raised a problem that I would call the Problem of the Third Man: the problem of the sane and rational but undeterrable offender. Pereboom raises it in support of Quarantine, and the inability to deal with it must be added to the objections to retributive and non-retributive theories of punishment; the problem is to deal with it without adopting the Quarantine Model of criminal justice. The “double track” solution, I suggest, amounts to the tacking together of two unacceptable models and in any event is unstable.

Keywords: punishment, prevention, free will, double track