NCJ Number
105874
Journal
Philosophy and Public Affairs Volume: 4 Issue: 4 Dated: (Fall 1985) Pages: 327-373
Date Published
1985
Length
48 pages
Annotation
This paper provides arguments to show how restrictions, confinements or deprivation of property that constitute civic forms of punishment do not violate the punished person's moral rights of life, liberty, and property.
Abstract
It is argued that threats of punishment are justified by the right of self-protection: at its moral core, punishment is a practice of self-protective threats. Further, every intuitively justified punishment has as its counterpart a threat of punishment that is justified by the right of self-protection. Thus, there is a functional moral equivalence between the threat and the actual punishment, and both are systems of deterrent threat justified by the right to self-protection. Given this, punishing criminals for their crimes does not violate their rights because subjecting them to the threat of punishment for a crime did not violate their rights in the first place. 55 footnotes.