Is criminal justice a genuine component of justice? Is the word justice merely window-dressing for an institution that specializes in coercion and blame? An argument along these lines would emphasize the fact that criminal justice institutions impose pain on those who’ve already imposed pain on others. It would treat criminal justice as an exercise in score-settling—a communal exercise, of course, not an individual one, but nonetheless an exercise defined by the dynamic of revenge. In adopting this position, someone might say that criminal justice has no serious connection to justice. The word justice is a façade: it’s used to mislead people as to the true function of legally imposed punishment. Alternatively, it might be argued that the concept of justice is indispensable to understanding criminal justice. On this reckoning, there is something fitting, even right, associated with punishing offenders, something that elevates it above revenge and that makes it appropriate to speak of justice when talking about an institution that expresses the community’s indignation concerning those who have maliciously harmed others.