OVERVIEW

The consequentialist solution to the problem of punishment maintains that punishing people for breaking the law is morally permissible because of its presumed good consequences. This solution can be defended in two importantly distinct ways. First, the consequentialist solution in particular can be defended in the context of a broader defense of consequentialism as a moral theory in general. On this account, any behavior is morally justified if and only if its expected consequences are better than those of any available alternative behavior and punishment is simply one particular instance of this general phenomenon. A second defense of the consequentialist solution seeks to defend punishment in particular without committing itself to this larger principle about morality in general. On this second approach, the defender of punishment maintains that some things are morally justified by their positive consequences, and that punishment is one of these things, without insisting that everything that is morally justified is justified by its positive consequences or that everything that has positive consequences is thereby morally justified. Thus, while a successful refutation of consequentialism in general would count as a successful refutation of the broad defense of the consequentialist solution, it would not count as a successful refutation of the narrow defense of punishment in particular. And while an objection to the consequentialist justification of punishment in particular might show that the consequentialist solution has implications that are unacceptable to proponents of the narrow defense, it might turn out that proponents of the broader defense would be willing to live with them.