utilitarianism

  utilitarianism   : Theories of Justification Group Project DUE Sept 28th Over the next few weeks, we’re looking into various accounts of what justifies punishment. The four basic families of views we’ll discuss are: Utilitarianism Retributivism “Mixed” Views The Moral Education View Each of these views has implications for how we should punish people. Your goal is to try to bring out some of these implications by discussing and critiquing our current practices. You should: Identify some current feature of our criminal justice system (the use of private prisons, 3-strikes laws, parole boards, mandatory minimum sentencing, etc). State what would Bentham think of this punishment. Teach me a little about it. Give a analysis of the practice from the perspective of one of the four views listed above. You’ll be judged on how well (and charitably) you understand the justificatory view in question, on how thoroughly you present the relevant information about the practice you are analysing, and on the clarity and concision of your analysis. Please keep your papers under 2500 words and choose no more than 5 and no less that 2 practices to analyze.