Crime and punishment

Among the concerns of the British public, crime – or perhaps law and order – always features near the top of the list. Yet it is worth pausing to ask the question: ‘what is so bad about crime?’ This, clearly, is rather provocative. If asked in the spirit of an economist one would expect the answer that, when we look into it, crime isn’t such a bad thing after all. Karl Marx ironically remarked on what would now be called the ‘technology-forcing’ aspects of crime. The need for secure locks led to developments in precision engineering which no doubt had many beneficial applications elsewhere. As Marx says: ‘Doesn’t practical chemistry owe just as much to the adulteration of commodities, and the efforts to show it up as to the honest zeal for production?’ and ‘Torture alone has given rise to the most ingenious mechanical inventions, and employed many honourable craftsmen in the production of its instruments’ (Marx 1969 [1863], 387). Crime prevention – not to mention the academic study of crime – is a major enterprise and in this way contributes to economic growth and national wealth, albeit the growth of something that detracts, rather than adds to, human happiness. Crime prevention, in fact, is an excellent illustration of the point

that economic activity is not necessarily a good thing in itself. Crime, we know, is something we would rather be without even if it can have some consequences that are useful for some people. Crime is so bad that we punish people, often with imprisonment,

if we find them guilty. In this respect crime is almost unique. Apart from severe cases of mental illness or infectious disease, in a liberal society there is no other reason that we take as sufficient to deprive people of their liberty, however irritating they may be. Many philosophers and legal theorists have looked at the question of the moral justification of punishment, and we will follow this up later on in this chapter. Yet to understand the point of punishment, and its possible justifications, we need first, presumably, ask why we find crime so troubling. And that is what we shall explore in the first part of this chapter.