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Full Idea
The human soul needs punishment and honour. A committer of crime has become exiled from good, and needs to be reintegrated with it through suffering. This aims to bring the soul to recognise freely some day that is infliction was just.
Gist of Idea
Crime should be punished, to bring the perpetrator freely back to morality
Source
Simone Weil (Draft Statement of Human Obligations [1943], p.229)
Book Ref
Weil,Simone: 'An Anthology' [Penguin 1986], p.229
A Reaction
The Scanlon contractualist approach to punishment - that the victim of it accepts its justice. Given her saintly character, Simone had a very tough view of this issue.