Crime and punishment
Michael Lacewing
enquiries@alevelphilosophy.co.uk
Punishment
• Punishment is not revenge
– Revenge is a reaction of a victim, and
inflicted by someone who has no formal
authority
– Punishment is administered by someone
impartial, representing a legal authority
• How can we justify punishment, which
involves depriving someone of a good?
Utilitarianism
• Bentham: ‘all punishment in itself is
evil’
– The decrease in happiness must be
outweighed by some other increase
• Justification must therefore look
‘forwards’ to the consequences of
punishment
Three benefits
• Deterrence
– Internal: the criminal doesn’t reoffend
– External: others do not offend
• Social protection
– The criminal is prevented from harming
others
• Reform/rehabilitation
– The criminal no longer desires to commit
crime
Punishing crime
• If consequences are the only
justification
– we can ‘punish’ someone before they
commit the crime
– we can ‘punish’ someone who hasn’t
committed a crime
• But both of these are unjust
– To justify punishment, we must ‘look
backward’ to the crime
Proportionality
• Extremely severe punishments may
create better deterrents
– But such punishment is unjust –
punishments must be proportional
Mill’s response
• Punishment is about justice, which is
about rights
– Punishment is required when rights have
been violated
– But we have the right not to be punished
for what we haven’t done
• Proportional punishments will promote
greater happiness in the longer term
Retribution
• Kant and Aristotle argue that criminals
deserve punishment
– Punishment is justice in rectification –
setting right an injustice, to ensure that
each person gets what they are ‘due’
• Aristotle: justice as balancing the
scales, removing an unfair advantage
Scales of justice?
• Do all crimes give the criminal an advantage? Do
punishments remove this advantage?
– Murder and life imprisonment
• Talk of gain and loss doesn’t focus on victim,
rather than justice itself
• What is good about justice (in relation to
eudaimonia)?
– Practice of punishment is needed to develop virtue
(consequences)
– Individual punishments justified deontologically
Kant’s formula of humanity
• Utilitarian justifications of punishment treat
the criminal as a means to an end (less
crime)
– We must offer criminals rational, moral grounds
for repentance, rather than try to deter them or
remove their freedom
– Criminals have the right to decide how to live
• To treat someone as an end is to hold them
responsible for their choices
– Punishment is not ‘training’
Holding responsible
• In committing a crime, the criminal has
indicated they are willing for their maxim to
be universalised
– The punishment involves treating them as they
have chosen to be treated
– Not always a literal re-enactment of the crime,
but the removal of freedom for the removal of
freedom
• Obj: this just makes the world less happy –
what is the point if punishment is not a
deterrent?