[...]... and Voting," in Georgetown Law Review 84 (1996), and "The Circumstances of Integrity," in Legal Theory (1997) This page intentionally left blank FROM SOCIAL JUSTICE TO CRIMINAL JUSTICE This page intentionally left blank Introduction WILLIAM C HEFFERNAN AND JOHN KLEINIG What is the connection between social justice and criminal justice? The terms "social justice" and "criminal justice" are themselves... possible It is convenient, though, to begin with two distinct, but frequently conjoined, ways of connecting a redistributive conception of social justice and a retributive conception of criminal justice One connection is empirical, the other normative The empirical claim is that some form of redistributive justice is 1 2 From Social Justice to Criminal Justice essential to the reduction of crime in advanced... that judges ought to allow claims of justification grounded in considerations of redistributive social justice to be put to juries 8 From Social Justice to Criminal Justice Heffernan's other example, however, reminds us of the difficulties surrounding this argument His second defendant, Allen Rand, who is accused of tax evasion, argues that he has spent years trying to persuade others to limit government's... approach to criminal justice, " she argues, "disconnects the operation of criminal law from imbalances of social power."39 In doing so, she continues, this approach "wrongly assumes that the determination of what to punish is neutral and unrelated to inequalities of wealth." Her approach, by contrast, emphasizes the interconnection of criminal and social justice Under the current criminal justice system,... possibility that it can be legitimate to punish the poor for such crimes despite the unfairness of the social order within which the poor must conduct their lives 14 From Social Justice to Criminal Justice 5 Race- and Class-Based Remedies against Bias in the Criminal Justice System Proponents of the social reform thesis, we noted at the outset, often emphasize the extent to which racial discrimination exacerbates... between them, to think carefully about what they mean Each term can be said to pose a question In speaking of social justice, one asks about the requisites of a justly constituted society; in speaking of criminal justice, one asks about the basis of just punishment Given everyday usage, though, each term can also be said to provide an answer to the question it poses References to social justice usually... disparities of wealth—what they see to be a fundamental unfairness in the distribution of social resources that undermines the moral authority of the criminal justice system—they also believe that redistribution will lead to a reduction in crime We can call this conjunction of claims the social reform version of the social justice/ criminal justice connection The social reform thesis is not a novel... least, to secure the basic needs of all its members); (2) that criminal sentences can be classified as deserved only when imposed on people who have received their social due; and (3) that sentences imposed on those who have not received their social due are therefore problematic, at the very least, and perhaps wholly unjustified This thesis is open to criticism 6 From Social Justice to Criminal Justice. .. appropriate to try to correct the class imbalance that currently prevails in prison populations through a program of class-based affirmative action 6 A Challenge to the Retributive Conception of Criminal Justice As we noted at the outset, the social reform thesis forges a connection between a redistributive conception of social justice and a retributive conception of criminal justice, asserting that criminal. .. publications include Justice through Punishment (1987), Penal Policy and Social Justice (1993), Racism and Criminology (with Dee Cook, 1993), Race, Crime and Justice, (ed 1996), Understanding Justice (1996), and "Doing Justice to Difference," in Fundamentals of Sentencing Theory (ed Andrew Ashworth & Martin Wasik, 1998) She has also published several articles on criminal justice topics ANDREW A KARMEN . Macedo From Social Justice to Criminal Justice Poverty and the Administration of Criminal Law Edited by William C. Heffernan and John Kleinig FROM. of Criminal Justice, City University of New York, and director of the Institute for Criminal Justice Ethics. He is an editor of Criminal Justice