Punishment and Welfare: Defending Offender’s Inclusion as Subjects of State Care

Abstract

Many criminal offenders come from disadvantaged backgrounds, which punishment entrenches. Criminal culpability explains some disadvantageous treatment in state-offender interactions; yet offenders remain people, and 'some mother's child', in Eva Kittay's terms. Offending behaviour neither erases needs, nor fully excuses our responsibility for offenders' needs. Caring is demanded in principle, recognising the offender's personhood. Supporting offenders may amplify welfare resources: equipping offenders to provide self-care; to meet caring responsibilities; and enabling offenders' contribution to 2 shared social life, by providing support and furthering the choices of others seeking to engage with them. The desistance paradigm (viewing desistance from offending as a process, following from an offender's active choice in the context of stabilising social structures and personal circumstances), implies that a supportive environment may facilitate reduced recidivism. While decisions about criminal culpability need justice, we may use state resources most effectively by also including care ethics in our thinking about punishment.

Probation and the ethics of care

“…Tronto (2010) argues that it is a mistake for organisations to think about care as a commodity rather than a process. Her view that care is not best managed by the market is in line with much criticism of recent probation reform (see, for example, Burke and Collett, 2020).…”

Non‐paradigmatic punishments

“…Even if the paradigmatic case is of particular importance as an initial point of orientation, explicit consideration of non‐paradigmatic punishing agents, methods and subjects of punishment illuminate complexities that are better engaged with than defined out of scope: non‐paradigmatic punishment still stands in need of justification. In particular, if we are persuaded of the view put forward by some advocates of the political turn that the justification of punitive institutions depends on the fact that punishment holds offenders accountable as members of a community (Bennett, 2008; Duff, 2001; Hoskins, 2019) then we need to ensure both that those who fall under those practices are, in the appropriate sense, community members and that our punishment practices are suitably inclusive of people with convictions as members of our communities (Brown Coverdale, 2018).…”

Caring and the Prison in Philosophy, Policy and Practice: Under Lock and Key

“…I have argued that people in prisons should be included as subjects of state care: as one of us, deserving of care and support. 46 Including care ethics in penal theory, then, can help us respond to people in prisons as moral equals.…”