The Justification of General Deterrence

Bibliographic Data

ID10693404
AuthorsDaniel M Farrell (corresponding author)
Year1985
Volume94
Issue3
Pages367
Publication date1985-07-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe Philosophical Review (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0031-8108 • E-ISSN: 1558-1470
PublisherJSTOR (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/2185005
OpenAlexW2317886590
LanguageEN
Citations received38

A side from any backward-looking or retributivistic aims we A may happen to have, there are at least two things we are typically trying to do when we punish someone for disobeying the law: we are trying to keep them from disobeying the law again, and we are trying to keep others from following their example. In many cases, we may have reason to believe that both of these aims will be served quite effectively by one and the same penalty: the two-to-five that we give the mugger for his first offense may arguably be likely both to deter him and to serve as an effective warning to others not to do likewise. In other cases, though, what we think is necessary for effectively deterring potential wrongdoers may be considerably more than what we think is necessary in order to keep the wrongdoer we are punishing from doing wrong again. The most dramatic example of this latter sort of case, of course, is capital punishment. For holding aside complications that are irrelevant to the present point, it seems that the most we would ever have to do to keep a convicted murderer from murdering again would be to imprison him for life. If, however, we had reason to believe that certain potential murderers could be deterred from murdering if we executed those convicted of the relevant sorts of murders, we might be tempted to resort to execution despite the fact that we are willing to concede that this is not necessary in order to keep the person executed from murdering again. It is sometimes said that in treating convicted capital criminals in this way we would be wronging them, since we would be using them as a means to our own social ends. We may believe, of course, on retributive grounds, that capital criminals deserve to die, so that might be our reason for executing them. The effect our action has on potential murderers would then be just a happy side-effect. If, however, we do not accept this retributive rationale, and yet do believe that capital punishment is both necessary and morally justifiable as a way of reducing capital crime, we will face the challenge that is implicit in our remarks above: that of explaining by what

Analytic philosophy · Contemporary philosophy · Criminology · Deterrence (psychology) · Economics · Epistemology · General interest · Law and economics · Free Will and Agency · Philosophy · Psychology · Torture, Ethics, and Law · War, Ethics, and Justification

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