By Deirdre Golash
ISBN-10: 0814731589
ISBN-13: 9780814731581
What ends does our felony justice approach anticipate and desire to serve whilst it punishes wrongdoers? Does the punishment of offenders do extra damage than solid for American society? within the Case opposed to Punishment, Deirdre Golash addresses those and different questions about the worth of punishment in modern society.
Drawing on either empirical proof and philosophical literature, this ebook argues that the damage performed by means of punishing legal offenders is eventually morally unjustified. saying that punishment inflicts either meant and accidental harms on offenders, Golash means that crime should be decreased via addressing social difficulties correlated with excessive crime charges, corresponding to source of revenue inequality and native social disorganization. Punishment might lessen crime, yet in so doing, factors a similar quantity of damage to offenders. in its place, Golash indicates, we should always handle felony acts via trial, conviction, and reimbursement to the sufferer, whereas additionally offering the felony with the chance to reconcile with society via morally stable motion instead of punishment.
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Additional info for The Case Against Punishment: Retribution, Crime Prevention, and the Law
Sample text
It is marginally conceivable that there could be an identifiable inherent tendency in some people to respect authority, but if so, we would not want to incapacitate all those who lack it. Deference to authority on the part of the entire population at liberty has unacceptable implications for the power of those in authority (not to mention that those at the top level of authority would presumably fail the test as well). Individuals may have personality traits such as aggressiveness, a short temper, or poor impulse control, but such characteristics are consistent with law-abiding behavior in many sets of circumstances.
So the cost of these crimes to victims is unlikely to be fully counterbalanced by gains to offenders, but is certain to be partly offset by such gains—gains that must be included in the utilitarian calculation. Even without reducing Levitt’s estimate of total social cost to account for gains to offenders, it is improbable that the benefits produced by a year’s incarceration would offset its costs, when costs to offenders are included. In order for those costs to be less than the total benefits, we would have to estimate the cost of incarceration to the offender at less than $20,000 per year (if we take $50,000 as the actual figure for social benefits through crime reduction).
Than its effect at the margin. Self-reports of criminal activity during the year before arrest show that the average (mean) number of crimes committed in that year is about 150,27 although the median is about 15, close to the number shown prevented in Levitt’s results. )28 This average set also includes a much higher proportion of crimes that cause reduction in the quality of life for the victim, which is much less likely to be counterbalanced by gains to the offender than loss of property. It seems initially that these figures would show it to be substantially more plausible that imprisonment prevents more harm than it causes.