In this paper I argue that punishment should be proportional to desert; that desert turns solely on culpability and not on results: that culpability is a function of what the actor perceives are the risks of his act to others’ interests and the reasons he perceives that might justify, excuse, or aggravate taking those risks; that because culpability is a complex function, ordinally ranking acts in terms of culpability is quite difficult; that converting the ordinal ranking into cardinal measures of deserved punishment must perforce be controversial; and that deserved punishment, which is deserved suffering, must somehow deal with the fact that the actor may have already suffered undeservedly (or may have benefitted undeservedly).

在本文中，我认为惩罚应与沙漠成正比。荒漠只取决于罪魁祸首，而不是结果：罪魁祸首是演员所认为的行为对他人利益的风险，以及他认为可能为正当，辩解或加重承担这些风险的原因；由于罪责是一项复杂的功能，通常很难根据罪责对行为进行排名；将顺序等级转换为应受惩罚的基本措施必须引起争议；而应受的惩罚，即应受的痛苦，必须以某种方式处理演员可能已经遭受不当的痛苦（或可能应得的不公正的待遇）的事实。