On a Parfit-inspired account of culpability, as the psychological connections between a person’s younger self and older self weaken, the older self’s culpability for a wrong committed by the younger self diminishes. Suppose we accept this account and also accept a culpability-based upper limit on punishment severity. On this combination of views, we seem forced to conclude that perpetrators of distant past wrongs should either receive discounted punishments or be exempted from punishment entirely. This article develops a strategy for resisting this conclusion. I propose that, even if the perpetrators of distant past wrongs cannot permissibly be punished for the original wrongs, in typical cases they can permissibly be punished for their ongoing and iterated failures to rectify earlier wrongs. Having set out this proposal, I defend it against three objections, before exploring how much punishment it can justify.

中文翻译：

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惩罚遥远的过去的错误

在受 Parfit 启发的关于罪责的解释中，随着一个人年轻的自己和年长的自己之间的心理联系减弱，年长的自己对年轻自己犯下的错误的责任减少了。假设我们接受这个帐户，并且还接受基于罪责的惩罚严重性上限。在这种观点的结合上，我们似乎被迫得出这样的结论：过去犯下过错的肇事者要么受到减免惩罚，要么完全免于惩罚。本文制定了一种策略来抵制这一结论。我建议，即使过去的错误的肇事者不能因为最初的错误而被允许受到惩罚，但在典型的情况下，他们可以因持续和反复的未能纠正先前的错误而受到惩罚。提出这个建议后，