Punishment
There are two competing approaches to punishment: consequentialist (or utilitarian) and deontological.
The consequentialist approach holds that we punish people because of the positive effects that this has on society. Specifically, there are three purposes that punishment can serve: punishment can protect us from dangerous criminals, confining them to prison; punishment can turn dangerous criminals into valuable members of society, rehabilitating them; punishment deters other would be criminals, reducing crime. This, according to the consequentialist, is why we are justified in punishing people: it makes the world a better place.
The deontological approach to justifying punishment focuses not on the consequences of punishing criminals, but on the justice of the act itself. Punishment may not make the world a better place--it may make the criminal’s life worse (because he has to suffer the punishment) and it may make our lives worse (because we have to pay for the criminal to be punished)--but it is the right thing to do anyway. On the deontological account of punishment, punishment is all about justice; it doesn’t matter whether it makes the world better or not.
Ronnie Biggs
Consider first the case of Ronnie Biggs. Biggs was part of a gang that in 1963 pulled off the "Great Train Robbery". The group got away with £1.6m (the equivalent of about £28m today). In 1965 he escaped from prison and fled to Spain; he later went to Brazil, which has no extradition treaty with Britain. Last year he returned to the country voluntarily, a sick man who wanted to die in the country in which he was born. He was immediately arrested, and returned to prison to serve the remainder of his sentence.
Biggs’ imprisonment doesn’t seem to make the world a better place in any significant way. Biggs himself is worse off because of the punishment; without it he would be a free man. The punishment also has a negative effect on us; it costs us money to keep Biggs in prison.
Further, the punishment doesn’t really seem to serve any great purpose: There is no longer any need to protect ourselves from Biggs; he’s is no fit state to go around robbing trains. Neither is there any real hope of rehabilitating Biggs to make him a useful member of society; he’s not in a position to contribute much due to his illness, and has probably mellowed about as much as he’s going to. Punishing him may have some mild deterrent effect, but knowing that aged criminals returning to the country forty years after committing their crimes are treated with leniancy probably won’t change the minds of many that have decided not to commit crimes for fear of punishment.
Should Biggs have been arrested and returned to prison? If you think that he should, even though it serves no obvious purpose, then you must do so on deontological grounds.
Terror Cases
Home sectretary Charles Clarke has recently got into trouble. He’s been locking up people who haven’t done anything wrong (at least yet), various Muslim clerics, because he thinks that it serves the greater good.
Presumably Clarke’s argument goes something like this: these people, left free, pose a threat to society; we need to be protected from them. We also need to take a stand against terrorism, showing that we’re on top of the problem, deterring potential terrorists. There’s also a chance that we can discourage these dangerous men from becoming criminals, to some extent rehabilitating them.
Suppose that this is Clarke’s argument. If it is, then it is a consequentialist argument. All of the purposes of punishment (assuming a consequentialist account) are met by imprisoning people such as these are claimed to be, even if they have done nothing wrong.
Is it right to imprison such people as these are claimed to be? If you think that it is, then you must do so on consequentialist grounds.
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