Punishment and Political Order by McBride Keally

Author:McBride, Keally
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
Published: 2018-05-15T00:00:00+00:00

It may sound like ressentiment, but it is a jarring passage to find in the midst of an otherwise straightforward plea for the proper structuring of law in the purpose of punishing. In these passages, he strikes at the core of the problem of democracy and punishment: when we punish, we make someone less than ourselves. The paradox of punishment in a democracy is that punishment is ideally used to encourage and demand that someone act as one of the self-legislating individuals that form the basis of an equal society. Yet the very act of punishing makes someone inherently less than those others in the position of enforcing the contract. Today, most people accept the idea that once someone breaks the law, they fall outside of normal citizenship. Once a sentence is served, a fine paid, the offender is supposedly to be welcomed back into society. Yet Beccaria's work helps remind us why that is so difficult. The process of punishing makes someone less than equal, and the stigma remains. We cannot place someone in a prison and outside of society according to a time regulation and expect their reentry into society Page 95 → to be seamless. Punishment can only work to promote democracy if it is circumscribed to very precise effect.

Beccaria saw the problem and tried to calculate a form of punishment that would maintain democratic citizenship. He concludes it is crucial for compassion to be maintained on the side of the onlooker, whether a passive observer of punishment or someone involved in the actual administration of it. He also insists that understanding must be established in the mind of the person being punished. If punishment is to maintain a democratic society, it must not break the bounds of natural compassion among fellow citizens, nor can it create the perception of privilege among different classes.

Beccaria's vision of punishment would not work in a society where there were different classes, for any criminal would then be able to blame his inequality for his penance. If there are already classes in society, practices of punishment will reveal the inequity starkly. Beccaria's work suggests why punishment and criminal codes must be reformed if democracy is to flourish. What had been the instrument of inequality must be wrested away, lest it corrupt the heart of the new republic. We might look at this idea today and say that such ideals are noble, but that the practice of punishment will inevitably create some sort of hierarchy between judge and defendant, guard and prisoner. Yet the practices of the Walnut Street Jail in Philadelphia in the years immediately following the American Revolution were closely aligned with Beccaria's ideas. They did try to create compassion between keeper and prisoner, and the goal of the system was to maintain every person's identity as a full citizen, even while they were in prison.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.