Michael Tonry is Professor of Law and Public Policy, University of Minnesota Law School, and Senior Fellow at the Netherlands Institute for the Study of Crime and Law Enforcement, Free University Amsterdam.

For nearly two centuries in the United States, the punishment of crime was largely aimed, in theory and in practice, at prevention, rehabilitation or incapacitation, and deterrence. In the mid-1970s, a sharp-and some argued permanent-shift occurred. Punishment in the criminal justice system became first and foremost about retribution. Retribution trumped rehabilitation; proportionality outweighed prevention. The retributivist sea change was short-lived, however. After a few decades, some policy makers returned tentatively to individualized approaches to punishment, launching initiatives like drug courts and programs for treatment and reentry. Others promoted policies that retained the rhetoric but betrayed the theory-punishment in proportion to culpability-of retributivism, resulting in mandatory minimum sentences, three-strikes-and-you're-out laws, "dangerous offender" and "sexual predator" laws, "truth in sentencing," and life without the possibility of parole.
What now for retributivism?
Retributivism Has a Past: Has It a Future? brings thoughtfulness and rigor back into the retributivism debate. This collection of essays trains some of the most influential and brightest established and up-and-coming legal and philosophical minds on how retributivism does, might, or should affect contemporary policy and practices. The volume's aim is neither to condemn nor to justify, but to take new policies and practices seriously and examine them closely.
At a time when criminal-justice policy makers are forced to reconsider contemporary approaches to punishment and attempt to devise new ones, Retributivism Has a Past: Has It a Future? offers serious theoretical critiques of the recent past and justifications for possible futures.

Preface
One: Can Twenty-first Century Punishment Policies be Justified in Principle?
Michael Tonry, University of Minnesota
Two: What Does Wrongdoing Deserve?
John Kleinig, CUNY
Three: Is Twenty-first Century Punishment Post-Desert?
Matt Matravers, York University
Four: Responsibility, Restoration, and Retribution
R. A. Duff, University of Minnesota
Five: Punishment and Desert-adjusted Utilitarianism
Jesper Ryberg, Roskilde University, Copenhagen
Six: The Future of State Punishment: The Role of Public Opinion in Sentencing
Julian V. Roberts, Oxford University
Seven: A Political Theory of Imprisonment for Public Protection
Peter Ramsay, London School of Economics
Eight: Terror as a Theory of Punishment
Alice Ristroph, Seton Hall University
Nine: Can Above-desert Penalties Be Justified by Competing Deontological Theories?
Richard S. Frase, University of Minnesota
Ten: Never Mind the Pain; It's a Measure! Justifying Measures as Part of the Dutch Bifurcated System of Sanctions
Jan de Keijser, University of Leiden
Eleven: Retributivism, Proportionality, and the Challenge of the Drug Court Movement
Douglas Husak, Rutgers University
Twelve: Drug Treatment Courts as Communicative Punishment
Michael M. O'Hear, Marquette University
Thirteen: Reflections on Punishment Futures: The Desert-Model Debate and the Importance of the Criminal Law Context
Andreas von Hirsch, Cambridge University