 The second line of objection to communicative versions of retributivism — and indeed against retributivism generally — charges that the notions of desert and blame at the heart of retributivist accounts are misplaced and pernicious. One version of this objection is grounded in scepticism about free will. Free will scepticism holds that people’s behaviour is the product of determinism, luck, or chance, and thus that we are not morally responsible for our behaviour in the respects that would justify the ideas that those who commit crimes are blameworthy and deserve punishment (see Pereboom 2013; Caruso 2018). In response, retributivists may point out that only if punishment is grounded in desert can we provide more than contingent assurances against punishment of the innocent or disproportionate punishment of the guilty, or assurances against treating those punished as mere means to whatever desirable social ends (see s. 3 above; but see Vilhauer 2013).