Ethical Beatings

In my ethics class, we've been doing presentations on different areas of ethics, such as religion, prostitution, animal cruelty, and the like. I was assigned the topic of how ethics applies to punishment, hence my odd but intriguing title. Contrary to what my title suggests, I didn't talk about parent to child discipline. I aimed at the much broader category of criminal punishment. It's really an interesting topic, so I decided I'd post the one page paper I wrote about it. It's a bit more formal and wordier than my usual stuff because I wrote it for an Honors class, but I hope you'll like it anyway:

This presentation will evaluate the justification for punishing criminals and present three different philosophies concerning how and why criminals should be punished.

1.      Why punish criminals?

Here are two of the most common arguments made against legal punishment. First, inflicting hardship on someone does not benefit anyone, increase happiness, or undo the crime. While it is true that the crime is not retractable, punishing criminals usually does bring peace of mind, security, and a sense of justice to the victim and most of society. Second, our aim should be to restore what was damaged, not punish the damager. This idea is known as restitution. It sounds nice, but it is usually inapplicable and sometimes leads to absurdities. For instance, how should a murderer atone for his crime? Our ideas of restitution are usually subjective, making them difficult to apply to an entire society. There is also the problem of premeditated crime. If you knew that a murder was being planned, you could do nothing about it. Because no crime has been committed, the would-be criminal can’t be arrested.

2.      Utilitarian Justice.

Jeremy Bentham, a proponent of Utilitarianism, proposed the correctional theory of punishment. Since Utilitarianism wants the greatest good for the greatest number of people, Bentham believed that criminals should be separated from society, since this would secure the benefits of security and peace of mind for citizens, but he also advocated reforming prisoners through job training, education, and counseling. Bentham believed that if criminals had the opportunity to make money honestly, then they would.

3.      Retribution.

Directly opposed to Bentham is Immanuel Kant and his Retributionist theory. Simply put, Kant believed that criminals deserve to be punished in proportion to the severity of their crime. He reasoned that if someone saw fit to harm other people for selfish gain, then we should return their behavior in kind. Kant believed that this was actually a form of respect for the criminal’s human dignity.

4.      Divine Command Theory.

The Christian theory is a complicated one. In Matthew 18:23, Jesus begins to tell a parable about a man who owed a huge debt, but was forgiven by the man he owed. The forgiven man then proceeded to find someone who owed him a small sum and relentlessly demanded to be repaid, ordering him to be thrown into prison until he could pay. When the man who had forgiven him heard about it, he ordered the unforgiving man to be thrown into prison until he could pay the original huge debt. The story illustrates that since God has forgiven our sins, we have a duty to forgive other people as well. However, although we may forgive, there are still earthly consequences criminals must suffer. A life of adultery may lead to STD’s or a sex addiction, for instance. Paul also encourages submission to the law and its punishment by saying in Romans 13:4 that government “does not bear the sword in vain.”

In conclusion, we have looked at different philosophies regarding punishment. Although their motives and methods differ, I have shown that criminal punishment is necessary in a just and secure society.


S.D.G.