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Crime & Punishment

The Injustice of Punitive Justice

We take their money, their freedom, sometimes their lives, but opinions differ over exactly what we are trying to achieve, how we should go about it and what justifies it anyway. Jane Forsey on the punishment of criminals.

“The problem of justifying punishment….may really be that of justifying our particular symbols of infamy”
Joel Feinberg

When philosophers say – and most of them do – that punishment needs to be justified, they are making a moral judgement. They are suggesting that the practice of punishment is something that, in other circumstances, would be morally wrong. We can see why this is so: punishment is normally defined as the deliberate infliction of suffering on an individual by the state, often through a deprivation of money, liberty, or life. Terminologically this is called ‘hard treatment’ and it is hard treatment that must be justified: in any other circumstances, this treatment would constitute torture (as infliction of suffering), theft (loss of money), kidnapping (loss of liberty) or murder (loss of life).

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