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retributionist. In DICTIOUS you will not only get to know all the dictionary meanings for the word
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English
Etymology
From retribution + -ist.
Noun
retributionist (plural retributionists)
- One who holds that there must be retribution (vengeance, punishment) for transgressions.
1893 October, “New Ways With Old Offenders”, in The Nineteenth Century, volume 34, page 625:The retributionist says — I quote from Sir James F. Stephen — ‘The criminal law proceeds upon the principle that it is morally right to hate criminals, and it confirms and justifies that sentiment by inflicting upon criminals punishments which express it.’
2011, Evan J. Mandery, Capital Punishment in America: A Balanced Examination, page 475:A lex talionis retributionist would likely maintain that neither the passage of time nor a radical change in the character of the defendant alleviates society's duty to punish the properly convicted. Immanuel Kant captured this notion when he argued that before a civil society could disband, it had to execute the last murderer in its prisons.
References
- Charles F. Abel, Frank H. Marsh, Punishment and Restitution: A Restitutionary Approach to Crime and the Criminal (Greenwood Press, 1984), pages 8–9
- the Oxford English Dictionary