Herbert Morris's influential 1968 'Persons and Punishment' grounds retributive desert itself in the unfair advantage offenders take over law-abiding citizens, making debt repayment conceptually prior to desert.

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Conceptually prior(as used in epistemology): Something that is logically or mentally more basic or fundamental—you need to understand it before you can understand something else.
Debt repayment(as a model for understanding punishment): The idea of paying back or settling an obligation you owe, used here as a way to think about what criminals owe to society through punishment.
Herbert Morris(as the author being cited): A 20th-century American legal philosopher who wrote influential work on why we punish criminals, arguing that punishment is justified when it restores fairness rather than just preventing future crimes.
Retributive(as used in theories of punishment): Based on the idea that punishment should be given simply because someone deserves it for doing wrong, like 'an eye for an eye.'

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