This chapter explores the moral status of the practice of punishing criminals, in general, and in particular of the highly controversial use of execution as one mode of punishment. Punishing criminals involves deliberately inflicting one or another form of suffering on persons convicted of crimes: property deprivation, loss of lib¬erty, perhaps even death. It involves subjecting those persons to treatment we ordinarily believe wrongs people or violates their moral rights. Justifying punish¬ment requires explaining why it is morally permissible, legitimate, or unobjection¬able to do such things - at least some of them, and within appropriate limits - to criminals: why it does not wrong them or violate their moral rights.