Although punishment theories have been slow to incorporate the move towards victims’ rights, Braithwaite & Pettit’s republican theory has been a notable exception. This paper is concerned with identifying the ways in which it urges us to rethink punishment, and its evaluation. According to republican theory, crime compromises the victim’s ‘dominion’, a type of freedom as non-domination, thicker than freedom as non-interference. In this context, punishment is justified as the rectification of the victims’ diminished dominion primarily through restorative justice processes. It is argued that republicanism reveals the concept of ‘dominion’ as indispensable to the development of a normative framework for victim-focused punishment, without reducing the criminal justice system to a system of tort law. But does this turn to victims come at a cost for offenders? Although the republican conception of punishment successfully integrates a principle of parsimony, it’s purely consequentialist character, reflected in the penal practices it envisions, is unreconcilable with the mandate for a stable protection of offenders’ rights and proportionate sentencing. It is suggested that the way forward requires a theoretical synthesis between republicanism and backward-looking justifications of punishment, corresponding to criminal justice practices which do not set up victims and offenders for a zero-sum game.