Utilitarianism
Utilitarianism, as the name suggests and tells, covers all theories that justify the evil of punishment only when that punishment has some utility. It is therefore forward looking, and consequentialist in nature, as it holds the belief that, ultimately, the only morally significant features of an act are the good and bad consequences produced by it.
The word utility has been used to justify punishment in two different ways in utilitarian writing:
- Use: that punishment is only justified when it has some use – that is, preventing further crime .
- Value: that punishment is only justified when it is most conducive to the welfare of society, that is, the value society gains from the punishment is more than the disadvantages incurred by the offender.
However most utilitarians agree that not only must punishment have both use and value, but also that there be no other solution that would deter as effectively with less distress .
While utilitarianists may slightly disagree on why the evil of punishment can be justified, authors agree that the purpose of punishment is to reduce crime. This purpose directly relates to the principle of distribution of utilitarianism. Most utilitarianists agree that there are three ways to reduce crime: incapacitation, deterrence and reform.
There are 2 main types of prevention: specific and general prevention. Specific prevention is aimed at the offender him/herself whilst general prevention is aimed at the public in general.
Specific Prevention
Wright in his discussion of Utilitarianism, describes three main goals of individual prevention.
- “Firstly”, he begins “imprisonment deters individual from committing crime” . So one reason for sending the offender to prison for a crime, is to make him less likely to commit further crimes through fear of more imprisonment.
- “Secondly”, he continues, “prison is...to protect the public from certain offenders” . So his second reason is we send offenders to prison to render them incapable of committing crimes.
- Thirdly, he concludes, “prisons ...to rehabilitate”. So we send offenders to prison to rehabilitate them, so that they no longer need to commit crimes. There is some debate about this third point, with some authors following the above example, focusing on rehabilitation as the third goal, others quoting reform, and still others mistakenly using the two words interchangeably.
General Prevention
General prevention uses the punishment of the offender to prevent others from committing crimes. It has been argued that sending an offender to prison has three effects.
- Firstly through fear of suffering a similar fate to the offender, the general public is deterred from committing similar crimes .
- Secondly, by sending on offender to prison, a proclamation is issued specifying that it is morally wrong to disobey the law.
- Lastly, “with fear or moral influence as the intermediate link...unconscious inhibitions against crime...establishes a condition of habitual lawfulness” .
A number of issues are associated with the utilitarian justification of punishment:
- Firstly, utilitarianism allows for innocents to be punished. Moberly states that utilitarianism can account for “when no direct partaker of the crime can be apprehended, other people may be punished in his stead”.
- Secondly, the utilitarian justification of punishment as an investment does not uphold the claim of punishment to be “something more and other” than burdens such as quarantine and war imposed by the state. Moberly argues that it cannot, as this claim is only upheld when an essential attribute of punishment is that it relates to transgression of a law, and therefore the crime committed.
Utilitarianism as a justification for punishment can be seen to fall under the category of a Theory of the Good rather than a Theory of the Right.
Read more about this topic: Sociology Of Punishment