Social Injustice, Disadvantaged Offenders, and the State’s Authority to Punish

Abstract

This article provides a critique of the view according to which punishing socially disadvantaged offenders is wrong under conditions of serious social injustice because states that fail to meet minimal social justice conditions lack the legitimate authority to punish (unjustly) socially disadvantaged offenders. I call this the authority thesis. The authority thesis takes unauthoritative punishment to be the distinctive wrong-making feature of punishing socially disadvantaged offenders. I argue that the authority thesis is vulnerable to two objections – namely, the non-selectivity and the incoherence objection – which, taken in tandem, should prompt us to treat it with skepticism. I further argue that attempts to avert these objections either tie the authority thesis to normatively problematic positions or show it to be theoretically incomplete. I conclude by outlining an alternative diagnosis of the distinctive wrong instantiated in punishing unjustly disadvantaged offenders, which is that of iatrogenic wrongdoing.