Censure theory and intuitions about punishment

Many philosophers and laypeople have the following two intuitions about leg al punishment: the state has a pro tanto moral reason to punish all those g uilty of breaking a just law and to do so in proportion to their guilt. Acc epting that there can be overriding considerations not to punish all the gu ilty in proportion to their guilt, many philosophers still consider it a st rike against any theory if it does not imply that there is always a support ive moral reason to do so. In this paper, I demonstrate that censure theory accounts for these intuitions much better than any other theory, including forms of retributivism such as desert theory and fairness theory, and expl ain why censure theory is able to do so.