Professor Jonathan Jacobs, director of the Institute of Criminal Justice Ethics and chair of the Philosophy Department at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, will give a presentation at the University of Nottingham on Tuesday, 27 September. The session will be 3:30-5 pm in Machicado Suite, Willoughby Hall.
In his presentation, titled, 'Censure and the Moral Psychology of Resentment and Punitiveness,' Jacobs will sketch the contours of increasing criminalisation and incarceration and heightened punitiveness in the US and, to an extent, UK legal systems - and their significance for criminal justice in a liberal democracy. He will discuss the morally proper role of resentment and punitiveness - they are not always toxic or morally dubious - and discuss how even resentment can figure in the morally educative aspects of civil society.
Jacobs is the author of nine books, editor of two others, and has published more than 60 articles in philosophy of law, ethics, moral psychology, and other areas. He is also editor of the journal Criminal Justice Ethics. He is currently working on issues concerning the aims and justification of punishment in a liberal political order, and the relation between criminal justice and broader conceptions of justice. He is directing a multi-disciplinary, collaborative project to explore ways in which the understanding of agency, character, and identity has implications for constructively reintegrating ex-offenders in civil society. The role of an agent’s states of character in ethical comprehension, reasoning, and motivation is one of his longstanding interests.