Punishment – Justice Everywhere

Should We Punish Non-Citizens?

On 3 September, 2020

In Governance, International, Punishment

In this post, Bill Wringe discusses their recent article in Journal of Applied Philosophy on difficulties justifying punishing non-citizens.

Philosophers spend a surprising amount of time thinking about punishment: about what counts as punishment, about what people should and should not be punished for, and about whether and why people should be punished at all. When they do so, they tend to make a lot of assumptions about the kinds of cases of punishment they are interested in: for example, that when the state punishes someone, it is typically because they have been convicted of a genuine crime at the end of a fair trial. One assumption that often gets made in these discussions is that the person being punished is a citizen of the state that is punishing them. But it’s important to realize that states often punish individuals who are not citizens. As I argue in a recent article, this matters, because some of the ways in which we might try to justify punishing citizens don’t seem to make very much sense when we apply them to non-citizens.

From the Vault: Journal of Applied Philosophy

By admin

On 17 August, 2020

In Animals, Children, Climate, Democracy, Economics, Gender, International, Migration, Punishment, War

While Justice Everywhere takes a break over the summer, we recall some of the highlights from our 2019-2020 season. This post focuses on the launch of our collaboration with the Journal of Applied Philosophy.

In 2019-20, Justice Everywhere began a collaboration with the Journal of Applied Philosophy. The journal is a unique forum that publishes philosophical analysis of problems of practical concern, and several of its authors post accessible summaries of their work on Justice Everywhere. These posts draw on diverse theoretical viewpoints and bring them to bear on a broad spectrum of issues, ranging from the environment and immigration to economics, parenting, and punishment.

For a full list of these posts, visit the journal’s author page. For a flavour of the range, you might read:

How environmental consultation processes can silence communities, by Dina Lupin Townsend and Leo Townsend.
A special series on causation in war, with posts from Carolina Sartorio, Helen Beebee & Alex Kaiserman, and Lars Christie.
On the role of care in punishments and prison, by Helen Brown Coverdale.
About the problem with studying non-human primates in laboratories, by Parker Crutchfield.
How values should feed into behavioural economics, by C. Tyler DesRoches.
A special series on the role of biases in oppression and injustice, with posts Lacey Davidson & Daniel Kelly and Alex Madva.
On epistemic injustices experienced by indigenous immigrant communities, by Amy Reed-Sandoval.
About what is the right number of parents for a child, by Kalle Grill.

Stay tuned for even more from this collaboration in our 2020-21 season!

***

Justice Everywhere will return in full swing on 7th September with fresh weekly posts by our cooperative of regular authors. If you have a suggestion for a topic or would like to contribute a guest post on a topical subject in political philosophy (broadly construed), please feel free to get in touch with us at justice.everywhere.blog@gmail.com.

Unlocking care in prisons

By Journal of Applied Philosophy

On 4 June, 2020

In Duties, Governance, Health, Moral values, Punishment, Rights

In this post, Helen Brown Coverdale discusses her recent article in Journal of Applied Philosophy on care in prisons.

Lawyers, criminologists and campaign groups increasingly call out the injustices of prison conditions. They are right to do so – we cannot and should not ignore brutalisation permitted and perpetrated by the state. But there’s more to prison life than violence. Although it may surprise you, care is present in prisons. In my article ‘Caring and the Prison in Philosophy, Policy and Practice: Under Lock and Key’, I argue that the ethics of care can enhance how we think about punishment. Care ethics can recognise and value caring in prisons, recognise and condemn both violence and inadequate caring, and help us improve criminal punishment by its own lights.

Should We Shame Those Who Ignore Social Distancing Guidelines?

By admin

On 13 April, 2020

In Duties, Governance, Health, Liberty, Punishment

In this post, Paul Billingham and Tom Parr apply some of their recent thinking on the morality of public shaming to the case of social distancing guidelines.

Social norms can change astonishingly quickly. Within a matter of days, and in response to the ongoing pandemic, we’ve witnessed the emergence of strong social norms against going out for all but a handful of reasons. All of a sudden, each of us is expected to stay at home, at least for the overwhelming majority of our days. And, when we do venture out, we must be careful to maintain appropriate distance from others.

This turnaround in social norms has been hastened and enforced by the public shaming, often on social media, of those who breach their demands. This involves posting, sharing, commenting on, and liking photos and videos of those who seem to be violating these norms, for example, by taking leisurely strolls in a busy park, sunbathing at the beach, or boarding a packed train. Twitter is currently awash with examples, from all around the world, using the hashtag #COVIDIOTS. Even the authorities have got in on the action, with Derbyshire Police releasing drone footage of people walking in the Peak District. And Italian mayors have been real trailblazers.

In Defence of Children’s Civil Disobedience

By admin

On 8 July, 2019

In Democracy, Punishment, Rights

In this post, Nikolas Mattheis (University of Bayreuth) defends school strikes for climate against the objection that school attendance is mandatory. Children’s strikes should be viewed as civil disobedience (rather than truancy) and as a legitimate form of democratic participation.

Should we obey immigration laws?

By Pierre-Etienne Vandamme

On 29 April, 2019

In Democracy, Duties, International, Migration, Moral values, Punishment

In many countries, governments impose legal duties on citizens regulating their interactions with unauthorized immigrants. It is for example forbidden to provide them with access to employment, housing or transportation, and even sometimes to merely assist them in some way. In France, for example, there has been a lasting debate about the so-called “délit de solidarité” (offense of solidarity) – a law forbidding citizens to bring assistance to illegal immigrants.

RÃ©sultat de recherche d'images pour "dÃ©lit de solidaritÃ©"

Are we, citizens of rich countries, under a moral duty to obey or disobey such laws?

Should we grant legal personhood to robots?

By Andrew Walton

On 21 May, 2018

In Moral values, Punishment, Rights

With significant recent advances in artificial intelligence and robotics, it is increasingly pressing that we consider the legal and ethical standing of autonomous machines.

Here I post some considerations on this matter from a recent debate organised by Thomas Burri (University of St. Gallen) with Shawn Bayern (Florida State University) and myself:

A Moral Case for Strikes against Syria? Part II: Punitive Strike

By Anh Le

On 30 April, 2018

In Punishment, War

In this post, I explore the punitive justifications for the recent strikes against Syria in response to the alleged use of chemical weapons. In the previous post, Sara was right to call into question the HI justification for the strikes provided by Theresa May. Indeed, even if one could assume that the strikes could satisfy the just cause criterion (and this is a big if), it’s doubtful that other ad bellum criteria could be met (proportionality and reasonable chance of success). The situation is Syria is complicated with multiple parties involved, either directly or through proxy. It is, therefore, difficult to determine what success would mean in this context and, correspondingly, what would be counted as proportionate force. I think Sara is right that the strikes could not be justified on the basis of HI. But, I ask, are there any other justifications for these strikes?

Criminal (in)justice and social contribution

By Fay Niker

On 29 February, 2016

In Governance, Punishment

The latest figures show that the proven reoffending rate for adult ‘offenders’ released from custody between April 2013 and March 2014 was 45.8%, with those who served sentences of less than 12 months having reoffended at a rate of 59.8% (Ministry of Justice, 2016). These kinds of statistics mean that increased attention has been directed towards understanding the reasons why people stop offending – largely in the hope that this evidence will support the design of reoffending-reducing reforms (see, e.g., the Discovering Desistance project). Another recent Ministry of Justice report brings together much of this research in its compilation of a list of ‘desistance factors’ in response to the question: What helps individuals desist from crime? (‘Transforming Rehabilitation’, 2014)

MarkoLovric at Pixabay (CC0 Public Domain)

Two of these factors are of particular interest, given my purposes here: (i) ‘having something to give to others’ and (ii) ‘being believed in’ (see below for a brief account of each, respectively; and see Table 2.2 for the full list).

Mass incarceration

By Lisa Herzog

On 9 October, 2015

In Democracy, Liberty, Punishment

One thing that I learned as a PhD student at Oxford was that philosophically interesting questions and questions about existing injustice do not always overlap – some existing practices are so obviously wrong from a normative perspective, I was told, that there is no point in writing normative theories about them. This seems right for certain cases, but I still haven’t quite made up my mind about whether it is always true.

I remember this Oxford seminar while reading this utterly depressing piece about incarceration and its effect on black communities in the U.S. in this month’s issue of the Atlantic.

Justice Everywhere

a blog about philosophy in public affairs

Category: Punishment (Page 1 of 2)

Should We Punish Non-Citizens?

From the Vault: Journal of Applied Philosophy

Unlocking care in prisons

Should We Shame Those Who Ignore Social Distancing Guidelines?

In Defence of Children’s Civil Disobedience

Should we obey immigration laws?

Should we grant legal personhood to robots?

A Moral Case for Strikes against Syria? Part II: Punitive Strike

Criminal (in)justice and social contribution

Mass incarceration

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