Abstract

The goal of this dissertation is to renew interest in utilitarian punishment theory, which holds that punishment is justitied only if it serves to reduce the future incidence of crime. Over the last fifteen to twenty years, most philosophical discourse concerning the theory of punishment has centered around retributive theory, which holds that punishment is justified through the desert of the offender. Yet utilitarianism has a number of important advantages over retributivism, while its disadvantages have tended to be overstated and inadequately defended. ;An ordinary-language analysis which includes alternative forms of acts called "punishment"--such as parental, political and peer punishment--reveals that the concept of punishment that best fits all such cases is a consequentialist notion of social control, and this concept fits naturally with utilitarianism. An analysis of criminal character, in the light of modern findings in psychology and the social sciences, reveals that moral responsibility--and hence, desert--is variable between different persons committing the same wrongful acts. For this reason, retributivism faces significant practical and/or epistemological problems in meting out the correct amount of deserved punishment to offenders. Retributivism also has problems explaining many current practices within the criminal justice system. ;Utilitarian deterrence theories do not face these problems, and deterrence is empirically proven to be effective in reducing or stabilizing the rate of crime. Such theories, however, face several critical problems. Deterrence theories may imply the unfair use of individuals as means towards an end. Also, it is sometimes objected that utilitarianism may--in certain cases--justify punishing innocent individuals, and that utilitarianism may also justify an inequitable distribution of happiness or utility. In defending utilitarian theory against these charges, I build upon the work of utilitarian theorists such as David Braybrooke, Russell Hardin, and especially, Richard Brandt, as I outline and develop a variation on Brandt's ideal-moral-code theory which provides relatively robust support for the concepts of fairness and human rights