The offender's criminal history is a fundamental consideration in American sentencing proceedings. If past misbehavior is extensive, many plans allow a judge to declare the offender to be incorrigible and a career criminal, and to impose severe penalties. This essay questions whether courts should be entitled or required to impose a sentence more severe than is indicated by the offender's contemporaneous nature and future potential, and whether allowing one's entire criminal offense history to dominate sentencing decisions is uniformly, penologically productive. There are situations wherein forgiveness might serve penology well if it will permit some offenders to move away from past mistakes and be fully readmitted to society. If punishment remains as the core concept in American penology, it forecloses serious consideration of forgiveness in sentencing, and the Nation's criminal justice delivery system does nothing but express the desire for revenge. Notes