Robert Blecker

Robert Blecker is an American academic, lawyer, prosecutor and professor of law at New York Law School. He is well known as a defender of the death penalty. Philosophically, Blecker is a retributivist, and is a public advocate for that theory of punishment. Quotes The Death of Punishment: Searching for Justice among the Worst of the Worst (2013) “We’re in the management business. We don’t judge inmates,” the warden explained...about life at MacDougall-Walker, a maximum security facility...Then on to Osborn, a medium security facility, where the best-behaved convicted murderers could eventually land. “I’m not concerned with what their crime was,” the deputy warden there explained. “I’m concerned with their institutional adjustment. We’re not here to mete out justice.”...“You’d think a level reduction would bring a better level of comfort,” the deputy warden continued, “but it doesn’t. It brings you a better level of security.”...Connecticut’s mission statement...said it all: “The Department of Corrections shall protect the public, protect staff and provide safe, secure and humane supervision of offenders with opportunities that support successful community reintegration.”...The simple, disturbing, paradoxical fact is, inside prison, it’s nobody’s job to punish. Ch. 23 A better name for a sentence of LWOP might be “death by incarceration,” abolitionists have insisted, using artful but misleading rhetoric to support the substitution of life for death. True, almost all aggravated murderers sentenced to LWOP will die in prison. But almost none will die because of prison. We all live condemned to die somehow, somewhere. Some of us will die in old age in our sleep, or watching television, or taking a bath. Should we call these closing scenes “death by sleep,” “death by television,” “death by bathing?” Or is it simply about where we die? “Death by home,” “death by hospital,” “death by bowling alley,” “death by incarceration.” The rhetoric obscures the reality...Although the more heinous crimes generally do carry longer prison sentences, the most vicious criminals serving life sentences for the worst crimes often have the best jobs, best hustles, and easiest lifestyles. In short, inside prisons, daily life mocks justice: Those who deserve it most suffer least. Ch. 23 External links Category:Academics from the United States Category:Lawyers from the United States Category:Non-fiction authors from the United States Category:Jews from the United States Category:Harvard University alumni Category:Living people