Poverty, distributive justice, and punishment

Abstract

Should poverty be a mitigating factor, if it affects neither the strength of temptations to commit a crime an offender faced nor his mental capacity to refrain from committing the crime? I argue that it should, because of distributive justice. I argue for this conclusion in two steps. First, I argue that we can improve distributive justice by mitigating poor offenders. Second, I argue that there are no strong objections against taking into account considerations of distributive justice in the sentencing process. I also compare my argument with an argument made by Jeffrie Murphy and explain how some objections against Murphy’s argument do not apply against my argument. 'Abstract by Faculty of Law, University of Western Ontario'