Miller wbetc209.tex V1 - 10/29/2013 12:21 A.M. Page 1 Theorizing Justice WILLIAM R. WOOD he idea of “theorizing justice” relects what soci- ologists recognize as the tension between social structure and social agency as applied to ques- tions of law, crime, and social equity. One the one hand, theories of justice are relected and embed- ded in the structural determinants of social life, the material and nonmaterial aspects of patterned social behavior over time. hese social structures exist with a certain degree of determinacy over our social lives – for example in the case of crim- inal law, which may vary from place to place or over time, but which also exists as a social reality beyond most individuals’ ability to control or ignore it. On the other hand, justice is also rec- ognized by sociologists as a lived and embodied reality of social actors, one that, on occasion, may be radically altered by a small number of people (as in the case of revolution), but one that is also oten transformed over time through the collective actions of individuals or groups. Yet, for sociologists, criminologists, legal schol- ars, philosophers, and others, justice remains an elusive concept. here is no uniform set of assumptions or deinition of “justice,” nor is there any readily agreed upon typology of justice theories. Philosophically, justice is oten concep- tualized in terms of its attributes – distributive theories of justice for example seek to explain how societies can (or should) distribute the beneits and burdens of goods, opportunity, and economic activity. Retributive theories of justice, on the other hand, seek to explain the conditions under which punishment can be justly adminis- tered to those who have broken the law, and how such punishment can be mostly efectively used. Other typologies may focus more on the goals of justice approaches – “social justice” for example is oten used to describe a loosely conceptualized minimum of social, legal, and economic stan- dards by which states and public actors should be required to act. his chapter will irst look at several distribu- tive theories of justice. hese theories are oten he Encyclopedia of heoretical Criminology, First Edition. Edited by J. Mitchell Miller. © 2014 Blackwell Publishing Ltd. Published 2014 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd. DOI: 10.1002/9781118517390/wbetc209 at the heart of our concept of justice and social equity, particularly in terms of issues such as poverty and social inequality. Second, the chapter will provide the four predominant theories of punishment – retribution, incapacitation, deter- rence, and rehabilitation – giving consideration not only to the difering assumptions of justice within each, but also to the historical contexts of their use and application in the United States. heories of distributive justice inquire into the beneits and burdens of economic activity. Diferent theories may place more emphasis on questions of how to distribute the beneits and burdens of material goods, while others may focus on less tangible goods, such as welfare or happiness. Moreover, the assumptions of dis- tributive theories are divergent. However, most focus at the very least on addressing questions of what should be distributed; who should be involved in the burdens and beneits of economic activity and in what capacities; and how or on what basis the beneits and burdens of this activity should be distributed. heories of distributive justice thus seek to address one or even all of these questions, as they inform the problems of deining justice and of determining how it is best achieved. hese questions seek an answer to how economic life and people’s well-being can be most equitable and most fairly distributed. Should people have total freedom to pursue their own economic well-being, for example, or should the state put limits on people’s ability to pursue wealth, or even redistribute wealth? What about opportunity? Should states seek to make opportunity equitable, or rather it is enough to provide a minimum amount of opportunity for all members? Strict egalitarian theories argue that justice is best achieved through an equal distribution of material goods. he premise of these theories is that, ethically, the value of one person is no greater or smaller than the value of another. Given the central importance of goods and service for survival and quality of life, the amount of these items should thus also be equal among equals. hese theories face a number of problems however. Primarily, they oten fail to account for the varying needs that individuals may have, for