On a communicative retributivist account, treating offenders as responsible agents involves pointing out when they have done wrong and expecting them to take responsibility for their wrongful actions.
The second line of objection to communicative versions of retributivism — and indeed against retributivism generally — charges that the notions of desert and blame at the heart of retributivist accounts are misplaced and pernicious. One version of this objection is grounded in scepticism about free will. Free will scepticism holds that people’s behaviour is the product of determinism, luck, or chance, and thus that we are not morally responsible for our behaviour in the respects that would justify the ideas that those who commit crimes are blameworthy and deserve punishment (see Pereboom 2013;...