Why Punish?
| Date | 01 December 2019 |
| Author | NICOLA PADFIELD,ROB CANTON |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/hojo.12342 |
| Published date | 01 December 2019 |
The Howard Journal Vol58 No 4. December 2019 DOI: 10.1111/hojo.12342
ISSN 2059-1098, pp. 535–553
Why Punish?
ROB CANTON with NICOLA PADFIELD
Rob Canton is Professor in Community and Criminal Justice, De Montfort
University, Leicester; Nicola Padfield is Professor of Criminal and Penal
Justice and Master of Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge
Abstract: Three ways of understanding the question ‘Why punish?’ are distinguished.
Answers commonly invoke three purposes and justifications – that punishment is the way
to reduce offending, that it rights the wrong, and that it vindicates the victim. All these
accounts are challenged. There is particular attention to the concept of rehabilitation and
an explication of what this analysis entails for the work of probation. It is concluded
that there is a need to develop a broader philosophy of responding to wrongdoing with
attention to the implementation of punishment and to the ‘end state’ where the wrongful
act may be considered resolved.
Keywords: censure; probation; punishment; rehabilitation
This is the 21st in an annual series of lectures to honour the memory of Bill
McWilliams. Bill had a long and distinguished association with the proba-
tion service – as a practitioner and manager, as a researcher and a scholar.
Among the many reasons he is remembered with affection is for his willing-
ness to develop the academic careers of others and to create opportunities
for them to fulfil their potential. His own scholarly work was marked by
three particular related characteristics. First, his commitment to thinking
about values in his appreciation of probation’s work. He recognised that
probation has always been a task of political and moral significance and
never reducible to methods and claims to effectiveness. There is much more
to probation than achieving certain instrumental objectives – even really
important ones like contributing to reducing reoffending or (worse) the
meeting of performance targets. Second, his sensitivity to history. Histor-
ical perspectives enable an understanding of both change and continuity.
His most notable contribution here was a quartet of articles recounting his
study of social inquiry reports to illuminate probation’s changing concep-
tion of its mission through the 20th Century (McWilliams 1983, 1985, 1986,
1987). Today’s assumptions and preoccupations have not always been with
us and it may not be supposed that they will persist. Third, his insistence
on reflection on policy and practice. For all the importance of empirical in-
quiry, critical reflection, the exposure of assumptions in our thinking and
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2019 The Howard League and John Wiley & Sons Ltd
Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK
The Howard Journal Vol58 No 4. December 2019
ISSN 2059-1098, pp. 535–553
conceptual clarification minimise the chances of practices ossifying. Inno-
vations become working routines and routines may become habits without
the challenges of evaluation and reflection. Levels of sentencing are an
example. It will be argued here that none of the customary ‘purposes of
punishment’ provide much guidance at all about the form or weight of
sentence and the penal tariff, based on little or no evidence, is at risk
of deterioration into the inertia of habit. These hallmarks of Bill
McWilliams’s work are intellectual virtues for everyone to try to emulate.
Why Punish?
Why punish? – insofar as this may be taken as a question about moral justifi-
cation – has long been among the preoccupations of philosophy. Yet much
of the literature has become rather abstract and remote. In particular,there
is little in most contemporary writing in the philosophy of punishment to
help to enhance the quality of the decisions to be made by policymakers,
sentencers, or practitioners charged with putting the court’s sentence into
effect. Raising standards of policy and practice, and contributing to the
making of better decisions, should be among philosophy’s aspirations.
One way of making sure that philosophy stays sufficiently grounded in
practice in this way is through the use of case examples.
Case Example – Rita
Rita appears in court for stealing from a shop. It appears that the of-
fence was carefully planned: she had a false pocket sewn into her coat
to conceal the items and a device to disable the security tags. She admits
the offence and asks the court to take seven other offences into consid-
eration, although there is a suspicion that there may be many more. She
has neither excused nor apologised for her behaviour, saying simply that
she had no other way of getting money. Rita has several previous convic-
tions, almost all for theft, although once for robbery (for which she was
sent to prison for twelve months).The prosecution have gone so far as to
describe her a ‘professional thief’.
Rita is in her early thirties. She has a deeply troubled and unhappy
background and, since her teenage years, has had a number of rela-
tionships with men, who have variously abused and exploited her. Her
current partner bullies her, sometimes preventing her from going out
and seeking to control her in other ways. Indeed, the solicitor defending
her now believes that this man has had more to do with Rita’s stealing
than Rita herself is willing to disclose.
The probation report informs the court that Rita’s risks of reoffending
are high. The report goes on to recommend that she should be made
subject to a community order with requirements to be supervised, made
subject to a home detention curfew (monitored electronically) and to
attend a programme to improve her ‘thinking skills’ because she does
not think through the consequences of her behaviour.
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2019 The Howard League and John Wiley & Sons Ltd
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