Redemption for wrongdoing: The fate of collaborators after 1945

Abstract

The prosecution of wrongdoers in transitional justice differs from ordinary criminal justice in that defendants can appeal to an argument from redemption: even if they admit to wrongdoing as agents of the autocratic regime during one period of its existence, they may receive lenient treatment on grounds of their later acts of resistance to the regime. Trials and purges of collaborators in France and Norway after World War II provide many examples. The moral and sometimes the legal efficacy of this argument is undermined, however, if the later acts were undertaken for the purpose of redemption. It may also be undermined if the earlier acts were so grave that nothing can wipe them out.