NCJ Number
169208
Journal
Social Justice Volume: 22 Issue: 2 Dated: (Summer 1995) Pages: 7-24
Date Published
1995
Length
18 pages
Annotation
The institution of punishment, which has been pursued by the Clinton administration as well as other governmental institutions throughout American history, is ethically, politically, and legally unjustifiable.
Abstract
One of the main functions of law as an institution has been to turn various ethical and other kinds of interests into obligations, and then to enforce these obligations through coercive punishments. The intended or unintended effect of this process has been to preserve or change existing distributions of economic, political, and other kinds of power in society. In law as well as in ethics, giving special weight to obligations as overriding normative considerations tends to yield reductive decisions that fail to do justice to a variety of other ethical considerations. Growing dissatisfaction with the ethics of obligation has been one of the motivations for developing an alternative ethical approach to personal and social life and to such institutions as law and punishment. Another motivation has been the need for an ethic that more adequately reflects the experience of women and children as well as men and of people who represent various groups and cultures. The alternative ethical approach recommended in this paper is that of "rights-in-social-relations," which locates the responsibility for most of our social successes and failures in people collectively acting and living within established patterns of social relations. This ethical approach questions institutional practices based on norms used to classify people as socially different, less valuable, or expendable. If society adopts the ethical perspective of rights-in-social-relations, then it will rely more on institutions other than criminal punishment for the development of constructive behaviors. Changing and strengthening families, health-care institutions, child-care institutions, preschool and more advanced educational institutions, economic institutions, and community-governance institutions will pay much higher personal and social dividends for the same social investment than will the attempt to expand and strengthen the institution of criminal punishment. 2 notes and 17 references