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2019 | OriginalPaper | Buchkapitel

7. Individual Versus Collective Responsibility: It Takes a Village

verfasst von : Thomas J. Miceli

Erschienen in: The Paradox of Punishment

Verlag: Springer International Publishing

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Abstract

This chapter considers the link between individual responsibility and punishment. Although such a link would seem to be an essential aspect of any morally acceptable theory of criminal punishment, it is the case that in ancient times, collective responsibility was a common practice, as exemplified by retaliation of victims and their sympathizers against an offender’s family or community. Even today, some vestiges of that ethic are evident in tort doctrines like vicarious liability and joint and several liability. This chapter explores the possible justifications for this practice within the context of the economic theories laid out in prior chapters with emphasis both on explaining the historical trend away from collective responsibility, and in seeking to understand why some examples of its use persist today.

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Vorheriges Kapitel Repeat Offenders: Marginal Deterrence and Redemption

Nächstes Kapitel The Limits of Punishment: Of Angels and Bad Men

Hawthorne’s ancestor was one of the judges at the Salem witch trials, which no doubt engendered this view of inherited guilt.

See, for example, Posner (1983, Chapters 5–8) and Holmes (1881, p. 6).

Although the story of Sodom and Gomorrah offers an example of group punishment, it also reflects the aversion to wrongful punishment in the form of Abraham’s intervention on behalf of the righteous residents of Sodom (Genesis 18: 23–33).

See Miceli and Johnson (2015), on which this discussion is based.

The analysis is based on Miceli and Segerson (2007).

Random punishment is not a mere hypothetical case. In his autobiographical novel A Farewell to Arms, Ernest Hemingway described the use of random punishment by the Italian army during WWI as a disciplinary device (Hemingway 1929). Specifically, as punishment for refusing an order to charge, every tenth man in the offending company was shot. This reflected the ancient Roman practice of decimation (literally, the killing of one in ten), which was similarly used as a means of maintaining military discipline.

There may still be some costs of bringing someone in against their will. However, such costs will only amplify the advantage of group punishment over individual punishment in this case.

Specifically, p is the probability that the correct person is apprehended, while 1 − p is the probability that the wrong person is apprehended. In the standard Becker model, it is not clear what happens when the correct person is not apprehended. That is, it is not clear whether someone is wrongfully apprehended and punished or whether no one is apprehended. The focus on deterrence alone in that model makes that a moot question. On this point, see Harris (1970) and Miceli (1991).

At the same time, we will show in the next chapter that morality can sometimes act as a substitute for law in regulating behavior.

Buell, Lawrence. 1986. New England Literary Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press.CrossRef

Feinberg, Joel. 1991. Collective Responsibility. In Collective Responsibility: Five Decades of Debate in Theoretical and Applied Ethics, ed. L. May and S. Hoffman. Savage: Rowan and Littlefield.

Friedman, David. 2000. Law’s Order: What Economics Has to Do with the Law and Why It Matters. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Harries, Jill. 2013. The Senatus Consultum Silanianum: Court Decisions and Judicial Severity in the Early Roman Empire. In New Frontiers: Law and Society in the Roman World, ed. P. du Plessis. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

Harris, John. 1970. On the Economics of Law and Order. Journal of Political Economy 78: 165–174.CrossRef

Hart, H.L.A. 1982. Punishment and Responsibility: Essays in the Philosophy and Law. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Hemingway, Ernest. 1929. A Farewell to Arms. New York: Scribner.

Holmes, Oliver Wendell. 1881 [1963]. The Common Law. Boston: Little Brown.

Kahan, Dan. 1998. Social Meaning and the Economic Analysis of Crime. The Journal of Legal Studies 27: 609–622.CrossRef

Levinson, Daryl. 2003. Collective Sanctions. Stanford University Law Review 56: 345–428.

Levmore, Saul. 1995a. Gomorrah to Ybarra and More: Overextraction and the Puzzle of Immoderate Group Liability. Virginia Law Review 81: 1561–1604.CrossRef

———. 1995b. Rethinking Group Responsibility and Strategic Threats in Biblical Texts and Modern Law. Chicago-Kent Law Review 71: 85–121.

Miceli, Thomas. 1991. Optimal Criminal Procedure: Fairness and Deterrence. International Review of Law and Economics 11: 3–10.CrossRef

Miceli, Thomas, and Derek Johnson. 2015. Asset Forfeiture as a Law Enforcement Tool. Contemporary Economic Policy 34: 119–126.CrossRef

Miceli, Thomas, and Kathleen Segerson. 2007. Punishing the Innocent Along with the Guilty: The Economics of Individual Versus Group Punishment. The Journal of Legal Studies 36: 81–106.CrossRef

Parisi, Francesco, and Giuseppe Dari-Mattiacci. 2004. The Rise and Fall of Communal Liability in Ancient Law. International Review of Law and Economics 24: 489–505.CrossRef

Posner, Richard. 1983. The Economics of Justice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

———. 2003. Economic Analysis of Law. 6th ed. New York: Aspen Law and Business.

Titel: Individual Versus Collective Responsibility: It Takes a Village
verfasst von: Thomas J. Miceli
Verlag: Springer International Publishing
Buch: The Paradox of Punishment
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-31694-5

Electronic ISBN: 978-3-030-31695-2

Copyright-Jahr: 2019
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-31695-2_7