Book Review: Revisiting Justice. The Moral Meaning of Parole by Netanel Dagan DaganNetanel (2025). Revisiting Justice. The Moral Meaning of Parole. Elements in Criminology Series, edited by David Weisburd. Cambridge University Press. 95 p. ISBN: 978-1-009-58772-3, $24(pbk.), $74(hardback).

Over time, various justifications for punishment have shaped sentencing decisions and penal systems worldwide.While retribution has been used to justify punishment as a deserved response to law-breaking, utilitarian approaches-such as deterrence, incapacitation, and rehabilitation-are found to be beneficial in penal sanctions only if they help prevent future crime.In Revisiting Justice: The Moral Meaning of Parole (2025), Netanel Dagan studies a particular aspect of the penal system, parole, and examines the extent to which retributive ideas regarding punishment find their way into parole hearings.Dagan's book is part of the Elements of Criminology Series, edited by David Weisburd.The purpose of the series is to present new and cutting-edge scholarship that invites readers to question and rethink a few common assumptions regarding criminology.Dagan's work begins with just that, as he tracks a recent 'moral turn' in the discipline.Researchers have begun paying closer attention to the social values and norms criminal legal systems worldwide are built upon; however, Dagan finds that this moral turn has thus far not been fully recognized in parole.He asserts that parole research has traditionally relied on utilitarian frameworks, as evidence of rehabilitative efforts, and low-risk calculations are traditionally employed to justify conditional release from prison (p.3).To reveal that parole also has a moral implication and involves considerations regarding whether conditional release from prison is justified based on desert, Dagan conducts a case study of the decision-making process of the Israeli parole board, which he describes as complex and discretionary.As a faculty of law in Jerusalem, he has become an expert on criminal punishment in Israel over the years and has already published several studies on its penal system.