Punishment has no intrinsic value
It is a serious mistake to think that “punishing the guilty” is something valuable by itself.
See https://manuherran.com/dont-punish-the-guilty/
Does it make sense for representatives of a state to claim to be against violence?
The state is the institution to which the citizens delegate the task of administering violence.
When is violence acceptable?
I think the only violence, or norm about violence, towards a certain individual, that is acceptable, is when under a criterion of self-interest, is accepted by said individual to prevent another even greater evil.
Before the punishment: restitution
The punishment is given to an intentional being who has done something that it would have been better that he had not done. Before thinking about punishment, we must think about the restitution, which is to restore the current situation as far as possible to the previous situation. For example, in a system where there is private property and in a context in which stealing is bad, before thinking about punishing the person who has stolen, we must think about how to return the stolen goods.
Why punish?
There are different explanations, theories, and arguments to justify the validity of the punishment.
In my opinion, these are barely acceptable:
- Because it’s always been done like that, because it’s the custom
- Because that’s what some law or regulation says
- Because I want to and I can. I have the strength and the power to do it, and no one will oppose me
- For revenge
- For poetic justice: by balancing the damages received among those causing the damage
In my opinion, these may be acceptable:
- In order to make amends, as a form of recognition of guilt and petition for forgiveness to society
- For prevention: to avoid undesirable situations in the future
It is possible to voluntarily accept a punishment as a way of making amends.
I believe that prevention is the only valid objective of an involuntary punishment.
In case of reasonable doubt about the goodness of the new proposals of forms of punishment, we can prudentially recognize a certain value in custom and tradition.
How to punish?
- Golden rule of utilitarian consequentialism: a punishment is a good idea when the world is a better place after that punishment.
- Golden rule of Kantian deontologism: punishment must be established so that it can become a universal law.
- Rule for parents: you have to punish without desire. If by punishing you are releasing your anger, probably you are doing it wrong.
What is the point of punishing, if free will does not exist?
See https://manuherran.com/freedom/
Some people ask: “If we are determined by genes + environment, what do we do with all the prisoners? Do we open all the prisons?” The answer is simple: what was the purpose of that prison sentence? According to the different theories, the purpose can be prevention of future crimes, reforming the criminal, readaptation of the criminal into society, etc. Well, these purposes of punishment is not affected by the fact that there is no freedom or free will in the usual sense of the word, and can also be applied to humans, non-human animals or robots.
Physical or psychological punishments?
- Some people would prefer certain physical punishments rather than certain psychological punishments
- The rejection by the group (ostracism) is not a minor punishment
Punish the act or punish the consequence of the act?
Suppose 100 people drive in exactly the same way: twice the speed allowed and across a pedestrian crossing. They each do it exactly for the same reasons. Fortunately, in 99 of the cases there is no accident, but in the remaining case the pedestrian is run over and killed after prolonged suffering. Should we apply the same or different punishment?
If the objective of punishment is prevention, punishments for acts and consequences should be established according to preventive criteria based on evidence.
Does it make sense to apply the same punishment to 100? Maybe yes, at least if certain conditions are met.
Modulation to get effective punishment
It is not the same to receive the social rejection from a person, than to receive it from ten, or from your entire community, or from the entire planet that has access to the Internet. Those who defend punishment through ostracism, how do they modulate it to apply a principle of proportionality?
Punishments that can be easily modulated are fines, days in prison, slaps in the face, minutes in the shame corner, minutes sitting in a chair thinking about what you have done, days without access to your account, days without driving, days waking up earlier to prepare breakfast for everyone, days without TV nor games.
Difficult to modulate are cries and speeches: you’ll need strong psychological skills and play characters like a actor. Death penalty is also very difficult to modulate since the physical and psychological pain can differ immensely from some deaths to others.
Ostracism and all types of public shaming are extremely uncontrollable.
A world without punishment
I wish the punishment wasn’t necessary. Modern children’s pedagogy says that children should never be punished, but set limits, so that there are “limits” and “consequences.” I really like the idea, although I’m not sure how much of it is just marketing. The idea of educating on “limits and consequences” makes sense in an area that refers to a higher one that cannot be controlled. For example, in a school, doing physical harm to another child is a limit that can have consequences in the legal and even criminal sphere, and these legal aspects cannot be controlled by the school. In adults, not washing and having a bad smell will produce the consequence that the rest of the individuals will move away from you, and this is a programmed behavior that is beyond our reach, so that there are “limits” (of time without bathing) and “consequences”. But if the school establishes the limit that throwing paper balls at the teacher in class has the consequence of staying in the classroom alone without being able to go down to the playground in the break, to say that this is an example of “limits and consequences” would be pure cynicism . What the school is doing is simply establishing a system of punishment. And if my partner tells me that until I take a bath she will not make love to me, it would be equally cynical to say that this is a case of “limits and consequences”, since it is my partner who has decided that rule and who has all the freedom to change it.
Perhaps what modern theories refer to when avoiding the word “punishment” is that there is no intention of revenge, that there is no intention of doing harm for free, but rather that it is about establishing systems to solve and prevent conflicts. In that case, using the word “punishment” versus using “limits and consequences” seems to me more like a fashion trend or a simple evolution of language, although I do not deny that there may be good reasons for this.
The consequentialist approach to punishment and apology
Although strict consequentialism may be indistinguishable from its own parody, it is reasonable to delve into what the methodology that can bring us closer to achieving the best consequences; which forms of punishment are consequentialist and which are not.
Putting the focus on the intention of the act is a typical approximation of virtue ethics, and is clearly not consequentialist.
Focusing on past bad deeds seems consequentialist, but it literally is not. Actions that occurred in the past may perhaps be compensated in the future, but metaphysically they cannot be undone (except under paradigms like eternalism). Assuming that we cannot modify the past and that we can only influence the future, the only way to be truly consequentialist is to use the foreseeable future as a criterion.
Sending people to prison based on the actions they have taken will be consequentialist only if the objective we pursue is prevention, education for prevention, or any other consequence that eventually allows prevention. Sending people to jail for their intentions or their virtues will also be consequentialist if the norm is established with a prevention objective. Instead, sending people to jail for their actions, ignoring the consequences of sending people to jail is not consequentialist at all.
Of course, when rules or norms are established by forecasting their consequences, this will be purely consequentialist, regardless of the content of the rule. A rule or norm that takes into account the virtue or intention of the act, or the act itself, or anything else, will be consequentialist as long as it is oriented to the expected consequences of applying that norm.
Some people apologize for a bad action in one way or another depending on the intention they had. It is debated whether to apologize not according to the intention, but according to the impact that bad action had. In my opinion, this second form is still not consequentialist. The way to apologize in a consequentialist way would be to focus on the consequences of such apologies.
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