Why Would Two-Level Consequentialists Punish Only the Guilty?. Issue 2 (4th May 2017)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Goodman, Charles
• Is Part Of: Criminal justice ethics. Volume 36:Issue 2(2017)
• Page Start: 183
• Page End: 204
• Publication Date: 2017-05-04
• Subjects: consequentialism -- punishment -- two-level consequentialism -- desert -- hard incompatibilism -- liberal neutrality -- retributivism; Criminal justice, Administration of -- Periodicals; Criminal justice, Administration of -- United States -- Periodicals; Social justice -- Periodicals; Social ethics -- Periodicals; 174.9364
• DOI: 10.1080/0731129X.2017.1345221
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0731-129X

Abstract

Abstract : The most commonly encountered and most serious objection against consequentialist theories of punishment is that they could sometimes endorse punishing innocent people. Two-level consequentialists can resist this objection. Because of how deterrence works, a system of social protection would clearly need to be careful, most of the time, to pick out only the guilty for punishment. What about exceptional cases? Any institution empowered to secretly frame innocent people would pose a grave danger to democracy, a danger that could prove lethal under only moderately unusual conditions. Meanwhile, individual consequentialists working within the criminal justice system should fear that their own views could be distorted by confirmation bias and other cognitive errors. These officials should normally trust any moderately well-functioning adversarial trial process more than they trust their own judgment of who needs to be punished. They should use extra-legal discretion only in cases where both their confidence and the stakes are extremely high; and in cases where the stakes are extremely high, the consequentialist answer is no longer counter-intuitive.