No Escaping Retributivist Reasoning

Quote from my new favourite law paper discussing ideas I raised in death penalty conspiracies and lotteries:

But, retributivists claim, whether or not this is a good idea does not depend on the balance of costs and benefits. It is simply wrong to kill someone for double parking. A related problem is that of punishing the innocent. It is possible that, under certain circumstances, falsely convicting an innocent person would have a salutary deterrent effect, enough to justify that person’s suffering, etc. Critics also note that, so far as deterrence is concerned, it is the threat of punishment that is justified and not the punishment itself. Thus, consequentialism might justify letting murderers and rapists off the hook so long as their punishment could be convincingly faked.

The standard consequentialist response to these charges is that such concerns have no place in the real world. They
say, for example, that the idea of imposing the death penalty for parking violations to make society an overall happier place is absurd. People everywhere would live in mortal fear of bureaucratic errors, and so on. Likewise, a legal system that deliberately convicted innocent people and/or secretly refrained from punishing guilty ones would require a kind of systematic deception that would lead inevitably to corruption and that could never survive in a free society.

Retributivist intituions are so strong that consequentialists have to make arguments as to why better social equilibriums are not possible. If we could have convincing fake punishment the world would be better off. However, unfortunately it is probably not possible.

And who would have thought Jesus or Buddah would have such a good  understanding of neurobiology and determinism:

Intuitively, we want to punish those people who truly deserve it, but whenever the causes of someone’s bad behaviour are made sufficiently vivid, we no longer see that person as truly deserving of punishment. This insight is expressed by the old French proverb: ‘to know all is to forgive all’. It is also expressed in the teachings of religious figures, such as Jesus and Buddha, who preach a message of universal compassion.

There is something beautiful about universal compassion and forgiveness being tied to materialistic determinism.

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