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Course: Wireless Philosophy > Unit 8
Lesson 11: Should there be lifelong or permanent punishments?Should there be lifelong or permanent punishments?
In this wireless philosophy video, Barry Lam (Vassar College, Hi-Phi Nation podcast) discusses how offenders should be treated after they have finished serving their prison sentences and have been released back into society.
View our punishment learning module and other videos in this series here: https://www.wi-phi.com/modules/punishment/. Created by Gaurav Vazirani.
Video transcript
[Music] Hi, I’m Barry Lam, Associate Professor
of Philosophy at Vassar College, and the producer
of Hi-Phi Nation, a show about philosophy
that turns stories into ideas. In this video, we’ll be
discussing how offenders should be treated after
serving their prison sentence. Shortly after high school, Omar found himself serving a
five-year sentence for felony assault. When released, he began taking classes, with the goal of turning his life
around and becoming a social worker. Then the problems began. To help his struggling mom
with rent, Omar applied for jobs, but none would hire him
because of his record. Dejected, Omar
focused on schoolwork. But when he later discovered he was
disqualified from college financial aid, the obstacles to a social work career seemed
overwhelming, and he started giving up. Millions of people with felony
criminal records are denied benefits -- benefits like public housing
assistance, federal student loans, and the licensing needed to become
a barber, park ranger, or teacher. For some crimes, offenders have
their driving privileges suspended. They might be prohibited from entering
certain kinds of businesses, like bars, or from living within three
miles of parks or schools. In many states, felony offenders
are prevented from voting. And then there are many informal ways
people hold offenders’ records against them, like not wanting to work
with or live around them. These are all called
collateral consequences, and for many they’re
even worse than prison. Are such consequences morally justifiable? One reason to worry about these
consequences is that they seem to turn people with criminal
records into second-class citizens. Similar to what happens
in a caste system, they are forever branded with an
inferior status within society. A caste system is a societal
arrangement according to which not everyone is equal socially or
politically in a society, particular ethnic or racial groups
aren’t treated the same way as others -- like in apartheid. We might reject the hierarchy
created by the collateral consequences of incarceration for the same
reasons we reject apartheid. But many argue that what’s
objectionable about caste systems is that they tie a person’s hierarchical
position to traits outside their control, like race and heritage, which are
irrelevant to questions of moral worth. By contrast, those who
face collateral consequences only do so because of their
choice to commit crimes. These people made themselves less morally
worthy than others who made better choices, so they are treated as second-class
citizens because they’ve made themselves so. Some philosophers claim that culpable
wrongdoing makes you liable to harm, meaning that others
are justified in subjecting you to harms that
normally would be immoral. This is a common
justification for second-class status in many places
outside of criminal justice. Many have the intuition that individuals
who are culpable of wrongdoing should be given lower priority for
organ transplants than those who aren’t. Or think about war, where many
believe that if you were forced to decide between
two civilian targets, it’s morally better to
choose one populated by culpable wrongdoers
than the morally innocent. When it comes to
criminal justice, then, many are comfortable with
offenders being subjected to collateral consequences because they see
offenders as liable to such harms. In fact, it’s often thought that wrongdoers
deserve to be harmed for what they’ve done. For retributivists, that’s the
whole point of criminal punishment: giving people the
punishment they deserve. Can Omar and others be liable to collateral consequences as a
matter of retributive justice? Possibly. A retributivist can argue that a prison
sentence in many cases isn’t enough -- they may argue that proportionate
punishment for some crimes include permanent
moral second class status. Many retributivists already think there are
crimes that deserve permanent punishment -- particularly
crimes, like muder, that have lifelong impacts
on victims and societies. So lifelong prison terms or even
the death penalty are deserved. But even if this argument can be used to
justify permanent consequences for some, it can’t justify why
offenders like Omar are currently relegated
to this second class status. It’s a tenet of retributivism that
once someone is given a punishment proportionate to their crime,
they recover full moral standing, making it unjust to
punish them any further. While some crimes have permanent
effects on their victims, many do not. After a temporary punishment,
the debt to society is fully repaid, and the offender should once
again have the same rights and responsibilities as every other
citizen, both formally and informally. But some who defend collateral consequences
aren’t saying that released offenders, like Omar, deserve
permanent second class status. Rather, they claim, Omar is liable
to collateral consequences the same way he’s liable to being given
lower priority for an organ transplant: his immoral action can
be treated as a tie-breaking reason for the system
to favor others over him. Consider how Omar’s efforts
to find a job ended in rejection. The employer was presented with two
candidates who seemed equally capable of doing the job well, but one
had a felony record, and one didn’t. In what way can we blame
the employer for breaking the tie in favor of the person
who didn’t have the record? The way she sees it, it wouldn't be fair to
expect her to break the tie the other way, and deny the job to a law-abiding citizen
to risk helping someone with a record. According to this perspective, it’s unfortunate Omar was
left with extra difficulties as he tried to reintegrate, but the burden had to fall
somewhere, so shouldn’t it fall on him? After all, he committed the
crime, creating this dilemma. This argument might be persuasive,
but it’s important to recognize that collateral consequences
burdens society with significant costs. They are barriers to
successful reintegration and a leading cause of social problems, like homelessness, recidivism,
and untreated mental health disorders -- problems that affect not
only the offenders themselves, but also their families
and communities. Omar’s inability to get a job or
aid meant he couldn’t help his mom make ends meet or afford
to pursue a social work degree. His growing depression and despair
led him to give up on his new path and, ultimately, rely again on
criminal activity to support himself. As a result, his community may not
only have done further harm to Omar -- it may also have
inadvertently created conditions that direct
even more harm on itself. The need to create a more just
society overall is in tension with the idea that those who are
culpable for wrongdoing are liable to special harms
and lower moral status. What do you think? [Music]