Rethinking Criminal Justice with Professor Alan Norrie

Rethinking Criminal Justice with Professor Alan Norrie

Criminal Law in Lund Seminar Series Spring 2026

In this seminar, we are pleased to welcome Professor Alan Norrie, University of Warwick, who will present his latest book entitled Rethinking Criminal Justice: Punishment, Abolition and Moral Psychology.

Book description:

For 200 years, the penal equation “crime plus blame equals punishment” has meant prison crises, a permanent crime problem, and violent and damaged lives. The retributive theory of punishment supports this; fully developed, it could also transform it.

A moral psychology of violation distinguishes primitive and mature retributivism, explaining punishment’s necessary failure and the power of guilt, forgiveness, and reconciliation. “Atonement” means both punitive “payback” and being “at one” again with self and others.

Reconciliation for offender, victim, and society leads to punishment’s deep, tendential abolition. Intellectually innovative and bold, Alan Norrie’s mature retributivism is rooted in human ontology, in the metaphysical animal that thinks and loves.

Speaking to law, philosophy, criminology, and criminal justice, his moral psychology considers victims who victimise, grief at violation, denial and mourning, and the loving prison. Exploring ethics, psychoanalysis, social theory, testimony, and film, his psychologically developed moral philosophy challenges basic assumptions about punishment and the penal equation.

The book is available here: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108781329

Please e-mail linnea [dot] wegerstad [at] jur [dot] lu [dot] se to sign up for the seminar.