Wednesday, October 12, 2011

Court-appointed rapists

If the punishment has to resemble the crime in order to fit the crime, then what are we going to do with rapists? 

6 comments:

ABS said...

Send them to prison.

Think about it.

Victor Reppert said...

I see.

Unknown said...

Yuck

Anonymous said...

That the punishment must fit the crime is to be striven for, but it is a defeasible objective - if carrying it out involves doing the categorically wrong, I guess you shouldn't.

Victor Reppert said...

Or maybe fitting doesn't require resembling. I'm inclined to think that it gives people an emotion. sense of fittingness if there is a similarity between the offense and the crime, but retributive theory just says you're supposed to deprive the offender of happiness in a measure that is calibrated to the wrongness of the act. There is nothing in that that requires that the form of the punishment resemble the offense.

When a murderer is executed, the death of the murderer differs in many ways from the death of the victim. The state makes sure the death is relatively free of physical pain, something murderers don't care about. The person executed has an execution date set on the calendar for years prior, the victim doesn't. So the murderer's experience differs in many ways from that of the victim.

Everyone is under a death sentence, anyway.

Victor Reppert said...

This is not about Loftus.