Professor Thom Brooks

Thom Brooks has written widely about punishment in theory and practice, as well as restorative justice.

His theoretical interests focus on the issue of penal pluralism and how different penal purposes can be coherently applied within sentencing. This work is partly historical in identifying different attempts at providing a unified account in the work of figures like Adam Smith, GWF Hegel, TH Green and other British Idealists. His current work is centred on contemporary attempts at what he calls a ‘unified theory’ of punishment, an idea that made RCUK’s top 100 Big Ideas for the Future in British universities. Brooks has also written widely about restorative justice. This work examines how multiple penal purposes are applied within it and ways in which restorative justice might be reformed so more widely accepted. His work on capital punishment is cited favourably by the Connecticut Supreme Court in State v Santiago (Santiago II) in 2015 abolishing the death penalty in his native US state.

Recent Publications:

Brooks, Thom. 2025. ‘A Critique of von Hirsch’s Censure Theory’, Ratio Juris 38(1): 5-20.

Brooks, Thom. 2024. ‘The Relevance of State Misconduct for Mitigating Individual Punishment’ in Julian V. Roberts, Jesper Ryberg and Leo Zaibert (eds), Responding to the Culpable State: Is Sentence Mitigation Appropriate? Oxford: Hart, pp. 131-144.

Brooks, Thom. 2024. ‘Cruel and Unusual Punishment’ in Jesper Ryberg (ed), The Oxford Handbook of the Philosophy of Punishment. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 275-286.

Brooks, Thom. 2023. ‘Why Should Guilty Pleas Matter?’ in Julian V. Roberts and Jesper Ryberg (eds), Pleading Guilty: Ethical Perspectives on Sentencing the Self-Convicted. Oxford: Hart, pp. 127-150.

Brooks, Thom. 2021. Punishment: A Critical Introduction, 2nd edition. London: Routledge.

Keywords: Criminal Justice, Model Penal Code, penal theory, punishment, restorative justice, theories of punishment, unified theory of punishment.