Some argue against coercive preventive measures on the grounds that they amount to cloaked forms of punishment. Others offer a qualified defence of such measures on the grounds that such measures have substantively different goals and purposes from punishment. Focusing on the case of civil preventive injunctions, I clear the ground and provide reasons for a third logical possibility: that coercive preventive measures are relevantly similar to punishment, but this does not itself give us a reason to oppose them. ‘Punishment’ has a great deal of rhetorical force, and it thereby distracts us from the justificatory work that we need to do to specify proper restrictions on the state’s coercive powers. Whereas many commentators have proposed that legal theory provides grounds for challenging civil preventive orders, I argue for the opposite view. If we understand properly the function of civil preventive orders, we will endorse them at least in principle, and will come to rethink some central ideas in the grounding of the criminal justice processes.

中文翻译：

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轻松处罚

一些人反对强制性预防措施，理由是它们构成了隐蔽的惩罚形式。其他人则以此类措施的目的和宗旨与惩罚有实质性差异为理由，对此类措施提供了有力的辩护。我着眼于民事预防性禁令的情况，为第三个逻辑上的可能性开辟了理由并提供了理由：强制性预防措施在本质上类似于惩罚，但这本身并没有给我们反对的理由。“惩罚”具有很大的修辞力，因此使我们无法进行为指定适当限制国家强制性权力而需要做的辩护工作。尽管许多评论家提出法律理论为挑战民事预防令提供了依据，但我主张相反的观点。