February 21, 2019
Dear Subscriber:
Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of
view. The theme for this week is politics, in honor of Presidents Day, which
was celebrated yesterday, February 20.
A set of proverbs about the proper punishment of crimes:
JUSTICE AND DETERRENCE
1. The punishment of crime serves two masters – justice and
deterrence.
2. Justice is the civilized substitute for vengeance,
addressing the desire for symmetry of suffering by demanding that the severity
of the punishment equal the severity of the crime.
3. Justice would seem to require the death penalty as
punishment for murder – a life for a life. But the death penalty is absolute,
while guilt or innocence is ever uncertain. The injustice of executing a
possibly innocent person outweighs the justice of executing a possibly guilty
one. Thus the just penalty for intentional murder is life imprisonment, not
execution.
4. Deterrence requires that the severity of the punishment
be sufficient to reduce substantially the commission of the crime. More
severity would be unnecessarily harsh; less would be ineffective.
5. There is an inverse proportion between the likelihood of
punishment and the severity necessary to deter a crime; that is, the more
likely it seems that one will be arrested and convicted of a crime, the less
severe the punishment need be to deter one from committing it, and vice versa.
6. However, since much crime is irrational, the result of
desperation, addiction, or mental illness, deterrence is only one of a number
of social strategies required to reduce it.
7. Justice is moral; deterrence, practical. Justice reflects
the philosophical view of human behavior; deterrence, the psycho/social view.
While just sentences are weighed on an absolute scale, sentences for the
purpose of deterrence require constant calibration.
8. The perennial conflict between justice and deterrence is
played out in legislatures and in the hearts and minds of judges, which is why
legislatures should adopt sentencing guidelines, but with enough latitude to
allow judges to apply the principles of both to an individual case.
9. In such an application, it would seem that if a just
punishment were more severe than deterrence required, justice should take
precedence, whereas if a punishment necessary for deterrence were more severe
than justice required, deterrence should take precedence. For deterrence would
not suffer if the just punishment were more severe, just as justice for the
victim would not suffer if the punishment necessary for deterrence were more
severe. Whereas if the punishment were less severe than justice required, the
victim would suffer, while if the punishment were less severe than was
necessary for deterrence, society would suffer.
10. Justice for the criminal is important, but less so than
justice for the victim or the social interest in deterring crime. A criminal
should be punished no more than either justice or deterrence requires,
whichever is more severe.
11. If incarceration is the appropriate punishment, it
should be both humane and productive – humane to serve justice, productive to
serve deterrence. For it is unjust to sentence a criminal to an inhumane
incarceration, where he or she is subject to violence. And it deters crime to
allow prisoners the opportunity to acquire skills and an education so that they
can be gainfully employed on the outside. These requirements are expensive, but
well worth the investment, and are as much a part of deterrence as the severity
of punishment. What is spent on the criminal on the inside is saved on the
outside, providing that it is spent wisely. Both justice and deterrence require
no less.
© by Nicholas Gordon
This week’s theme: Politics
2/21: Justice and Deterrence
