Criminal Law Multitasking

Criminal law pursues multiple goals: retribution, deterrence, expressive
justice, rehabilitation, restoration, and reconciliation. Scholars tend to
analyze these goals and their implementation in separation from each
other, without accounting for their interplay and coordination. A theory
of criminal law multitasking is overdue.
This Article sets up a conceptual framework for such a theory. We
develop a taxonomy that captures the interplay between various
procedures and substantive goals promoted by criminal law. Based on
this taxonomy, we discuss five mechanisms of criminal law. We propose
that policy makers and law enforcers select one or more of these
mechanisms to implement the chosen mix of retribution, deterrence,
expressive justice, rehabilitation, restoration, and reconciliation. We
provide reasons guiding this selection, among them constructive
community involvement, offenders' responsiveness, and integration of
victims' rights. We illustrate the operation of our multitasking approach
in real-world cases and illustrate its ability to facilitate the
implementation of the deferred prosecution and adjudication
mechanisms promulgated by the current draft of the Model Penal Code.