Introduction

U.S. Court of Appeals Judge Richard Lowell Nygaard makes explicit what many justices only imply: “Repentance and correction are the real, albeit unacknowledged, often unexpressed hopes of sentencing.” Throughout my work in these areas I have been struck, time and again, by the fact that state agents rendered determinations regarding remorsefulness or remorselessness for more than seven million offenders in the contemporary U.S. criminal justice system. They often made these determinations informally, never mentioning that remorse played a role. They rarely explain or defend the relevance of apologies to punishment. I find it staggering: millions of offenders, millions of state agents with diverse views, an infinite variety of contexts, and hardly any guidance on the proper relationship between apologies and punishment. The words from Beebe's judge cited in the introduction – “Is he remorseful? I think so” – haunt this book.