My claim that compatibilism cannot extricate itself from prepunishment is built on an ingenious argument made in this journal by Christopher New (1992). A person tells us that he is going to commit an offence (drive above the speed limit in Alaska) but that after he does so he will be beyond our reach. Since this person is highly reliable, we know beyond a reasonable doubt that he is going to commit the offence; and that we will be unable to punish him after he has committed it. He proposes that we go ahead and prepunish him now. New claims that we may prepunish this person for, after all, belief ‘beyond a reasonable doubt’ in the occurrence of an offence suffices for regular punishment, and such belief exists in this case. I replied (Smilansky 1994) that such prepunishment runs counter to