 

Justifying Social Punishment

Linda Radzik

1 introduction
The goals of the last chapter were to clarify what social punishment is, to
draw attention to the fact that it is a phenomenon in everyday life, and to
suggest that it merits the attention of philosophers. The goal of this
chapter is to ask whether social punishment – specifically, the informal
social punishment of moral wrongdoing – is justifiable. Is it ever permis-
sible for ordinary people to punish one another for their moral trans-
gressions? If so, why is this? What might be valuable or desirable about
such forms of punishment?
As we turn from a discussion of what informal social punishment is to
whether it can be justified, it will be helpful to have some examples at hand
where the harm being imposed is more obvious than in the cases of
rebuking friends or avoiding coworkers, which formed my main examples
in Chapter . So, let’s think of boycotts. Not all boycotts are punitive, but
paradigmatic consumer boycotts often are. Here, a group of private
individuals voluntarily commit themselves to not buying a particular
product in protest to some sort of transgression by that seller. Imagine
consumers boycotting a chain of coffee shops, Joe’s Coffee, because the
company engages in exploitative scheduling practices. They schedule and
reschedule workers at the last moment, not allowing them enough notice
to make proper childcare arrangements. They send workers who are paid
by the hour home when business is slow, despite the fact that the workers


Some passages in this chapter appear in previously published work, including “Moral Rebukes and
Social Avoidance,” Journal of Value Inquiry , no.  (): –; and “Desert of What? On
Murphy’s Reluctant Retributivism,” Criminal Law and Philosophy , no.  (): –.

See Linda Radzik, “Boycotts and the Social Enforcement of Justice,” Social Philosophy & Policy ,
no.  (): –.

This is a fictionalized version of a real case. Since the real chain of coffee shops reportedly acted
promptly to improve conditions for their workers, it struck me as inappropriate to use their
name here.

24

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 Justifying Social Punishment 
have already invested money and effort in transportation and childcare in
order to report to work. These practices are reported in the news, and, as a
response, someone starts a hashtag, #BoycottJoesCoffee, which gains
thousands of “likes” and reposts from people who resolve to buy their
coffee elsewhere.
This case falls under the definition of punishment developed in Chapter .
It is a case of intentional, reprobative, reactive harming. It also seems to meet
the authorization condition, since how Joe’s Coffee treats its workers is of
legitimate interest to its customers. I must put off a full discussion of
authority until the next chapter. But, for now, I simply appeal to the
intuition that the customers are not failing to mind their own business in
boycotting Joe’s. So, this looks like a case of social punishing. It should be
classified as an informal social punishing because the ones being punished
(the coffee company, its owners and managers) and the ones doing the
punishing (the group of consumers) are social equals. Neither one has any
formal, hierarchical kind of authority over the other.
Notice that the harming that is distinctive of a consumer boycott
includes both social avoidance and public rebuke. Boycotts are generally
interpreted to be aggressive sorts of actions that convey moral anger. But,
additionally, the consumers aim to harm Joe’s Coffee by reducing its
revenue and hurting its reputation.
I return to this example over the course of the chapter and ask whether
and how a punitive boycott like this might be justified. My strategy is to
ask what the “general justifying aim” of informal social punishment might
be. What overarching goal might the boycotters have that would provide
a legitimate reason for intentionally harming their target in these ways? In
posing the question in this form I am following the lead of generations of
philosophers of law and their discussions of the justification of criminal
punishment. In fact, almost all of the theories and writers I reference below
originally concentrated on legal rather than social punishment. (I won’t
bother noting this as I go along. Just assume I’m taking them out of
context!)
Part of my project here is to show how easily and fruitfully the
philosophy of criminal punishment can be extended to informal social
punishment, thereby bolstering my argument for thinking about things
like rebukes and boycotts as punishments. But I also aim to develop and


The phrase is due to H. L. A. Hart, “Prolegomenon to the Principles of Punishment,” in Punishment
and Responsibility: Essays in the Philosophy of Law, nd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press,
), –, at .

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   
defend a specific account of the general justifying aim of informal social
punishment. The usual contenders in the debates about criminal punish-
ment – retributivist, utilitarian, expressivist, and communicative theories –
all encounter problems as accounts of informal social punishment.
I instead defend something I call the “moral pressure” account.

2 types of general justifying aims

There are three strategies for identifying the general justifying aim of
punishment: purely backward-looking, purely forward-looking, and mixed
strategies. A purely backward-looking theory looks to a past, wrongful
action to find the reasons for punishing. Typically, the goal of punishment
is to deliver the wrongdoer’s just deserts for that wrong. The wrongdoer’s
negative desert is said to provide both a necessary and a sufficient justifi-
cation for punishment. The most prominent among this family of theories
is the pure retributivist view, which holds that wrongdoers intrinsically
deserve to suffer for their misdeeds. Desert provides both the reason to
punish and a limit on punishment. The suffering imposed should be
proportional to – or, at least, not in excess of – either the blameworthiness
of the wrongdoer or the wrongfulness of the action. Why should we, the
consumers, boycott Joe’s Coffee? Because they deserve to suffer for having
mistreated their employees. How much suffering may we permissibly
inflict on Joe’s? As much as (but not more than) they culpably inflicted
on their employees.
The standard objection to pure retributivism is that it is a repugnant,
bloodthirsty view because it counts the suffering of other human beings as
intrinsically desirable. The pure retributivist might emphasize that she only
values the suffering of the guilty, but I hardly see how this helps. The
suffering of the wrongdoer is portrayed as a good in itself, which justifies
punishment even if punishing makes neither the victim, nor the wrong-
doer, nor anyone else any better off.

I believe these theories also fail to justify criminal punishment, and typically for the same sorts of
reasons as those I provide below. But I do not pursue that line of argument here.

Different theorists use the label ‘retributivism’ to refer to different ideas. For some, it refers to purely
desert-based justifications of punishment. Others apply the label to any partially desert-based theory.
I use the term to refer only to the view that desert of suffering, specifically, is both necessary and
sufficient for the justification of punishment.

I took advantage of the invitation to Tilburg University to visit the Jheronimus Bosch Art Center in
the nearby town of Den Bosch. The museum houses reproductions of the artist’s paintings, as well as
statues made by contemporary artists of various demons and monsters depicted in the paintings.
Bosch’s vision of hell is a playground of inventive cruelty. Sin in this life and spend eternity

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 Justifying Social Punishment 
In contrast, purely forward-looking strategies for justifying punishment
appeal solely to the good consequences that can be achieved through
punishing. A classic example of this approach is a utilitarian theory that
appeals to the power of punishment to deter future wrongdoing. Why
should we boycott Joe’s Coffee? Because it might lead them and companies
like them to end exploitative scheduling practices. Utilitarians count all
suffering as bad but argue that the badness of one party’s suffering (the
company’s) can be justified if it leads to a greater reduction in suffering
overall (for the workers both at Joe’s and elsewhere).
Purely forward-looking justifications of punishment also run into well-
known problems. One is known as the “problem of innocents.” Notice
that the boycott might well deter wrongdoing even if the news story about
Joe’s Coffee is false – even if they have not mistreated their workers in the
ways reported. A large boycott of Joe’s still might lead other employers to
improve their scheduling practices. If punishment is justified solely by its
consequences, then there would still be sufficient reason to punish Joe’s
Coffee despite their innocence. But this is clearly objectionable, as it treats
the owners and managers of Joe’s Coffee as mere means to the well-being
of other people. This is a fundamental denial of respect to them.
In light of these objections to the first two strategies for justifying
punishment, most theorists turn to a mixed strategy: one that combines
both backward- and forward-looking elements in the justification of
punishment. For example, one might argue that punishment is justifiable
only if () the one being punished is guilty and the penalty is proportional
to the guilt and () punishment will deter future wrongdoing. This mixed
strategy retains the desert element, which many see as “vital to our
conception of ourselves and others as responsible beings.” But it also
rejects intentionally harming wrongdoers when doing so is unlikely to
bring about a better state of affairs in the future. In the case of Joe’s Coffee,
the boycott would be justified only if the company is guilty of mistreating
their workers, only if the suffering imposed on them is proportionate to
the misdeed, and only if the punishment is reasonably likely to lead to
improvements. Views like this are sometimes described as “constrained

straddling a giant knife or being continually devoured and shat out again by a giant bird. My
husband and I giggled our way through the collection, but it is sobering to reflect that these festivals
of torture were believed to be a depiction of justice – justice on a pure retributivist model.

Jeffrie G. Murphy, Punishment and the Moral Emotions: Essays in Law, Morality, and Religion (New
York: Oxford University Press, ), .

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   
instrumentalism,” because the desert condition constrains the use of
punishment as a means to pursuing good outcomes.
In what follows, I pursue a mixed strategy. I argue that the general
justifying aim of informal social punishment has both a desert-based
element and an instrumental element. However, the theory I defend must
be more complicated than the simple “guilt plus deterrence” model I just
sketched. For one thing, I think respect for persons requires us to pursue a
richer sort of good than mere deterrence. Second, I believe the desert
condition needs to be reconceived in order to avoid the charge of blood-
thirstiness. I reject the claim that what the guilty deserve is, specifically,
suffering. In the next section, I examine some alternative ways of thinking
about what is deserved by wrongdoers and how that kind of desert might
provide reasons for punishment.

3 the desert element in a constrained instrumentalist

approach
The key to retaining a desert element in a justification of punishment
while avoiding the bloodthirsty suggestion that the suffering of another
person is intrinsically valuable is to notice that “desert” need not mean
“desert of suffering.” Desert is often analyzed as a three-part relation, in
which someone (the subject) deserves something (the object) due to some
fact about herself (the desert basis). It is easy to come up with examples
in which the place for the object is filled in with something other than
suffering. A student deserves praise for her hard work. Here, praise is the
object. An athlete deserves the opportunity to compete for the champion-
ship given his qualifying times in earlier races. In this example, the
opportunity is the object. Desert can take many objects.
In discussions of punishment, it has seemed inevitable that the object of
desert is suffering. After all, the topic at hand is the justification of
punishment and punishing is, by definition, a form of harming. Harming,
in turn, predictably brings suffering – a subjective experience of pain, evil,
or unpleasantness. But it seems to me that there is a difference between the


Victor Tadros, The Ends of Harm: The Moral Foundations of Criminal Law (New York: Oxford
University Press, ).

See also T. M. Scanlon, “Giving Desert Its Due,” Philosophical Explorations , no.  ():
–; and Randolph Clarke, “Some Theses on Desert,” Philosophical Explorations , no. 
(): –.

Owen McLeod, “Desert,” in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward N. Zalta (), plato.
stanford.edu.

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 Justifying Social Punishment 
idea that one can deserve to be subjected to a harm and the idea that the
thing deserved is, specifically, suffering. For example, if I win a free tattoo
in a raffle, the object of desert is a prize, not suffering, even though this
prize inevitably involves suffering. In the next part of the chapter,
I examine several different ways of conceiving of the desert element that
emerge in the literature on punishment. Each presents a different account
of the object of desert in cases of wrongdoing. The goal is to find a way
of thinking about what wrongdoers deserve that is not bloodthirsty, that is,
that does not suggest that what we intrinsically value is the suffering of the
guilty as such.

. Object of Desert: Expression of Reprobation

One suggestion is that the thing wrongdoers deserve is an expression of a
negative moral judgment and disapprobation. Punishment expresses
reprobation. Indeed, reprobation is part of the standard definition of
punishment, as we have seen. Expressivist justifications of punishment
make the further claim that this expression of reprobation is the very thing
that is deserved in the sense that it is intrinsically fitting to the culpable act.
Punishing can therefore be justified on the grounds that it gives the
wrongdoer what he deserves.
Some theorists defend this approach by arguing that wrongful actions
have an expressive content to which punishment is a fitting reply. For
example, through their exploitative scheduling practices, the owners and
managers of Joe’s Coffee send the message that their employees’ interests
are not as worthy of consideration as their own and that they are not
deserving of fair terms of employment. This message is false. In punishing
Joe’s Coffee, the boycotters offer a correction to the false claim. They send
the message that Joe’s employees are worthy of respectful treatment and
that Joe’s owners and managers are in the wrong.
In this way, expressivist defenses of punishment have the potential
to avoid the bloodthirsty suggestion that what wrongdoers deserve is

The theories of punishment that I will discuss do not generally describe themselves as presenting
alternative objects of desert. More frequently, they take themselves to be interpreting what forms of
suffering are deserved rather than arguing that something other than suffering is the object of desert.

See, for example, Jean Hampton, “Correcting Harms versus Righting Wrongs: The Goal of
Retribution,” UCLA Law Review , no.  (): –. Note that some theories that
describe themselves as expressivist are what I will label “communicative theories.” See, for
example, Bill Wringe, An Expressive Theory of Punishment (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave
Macmillan, ).

Hampton, “Correcting Harms versus Righting Wrongs.”

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   
suffering. On this account, what they deserve is counterexpression. They
deserve to have their false message met with a true one. Punishments like
the boycott are just the means of expressing the true claim.
But critics question whether punishment can be justified simply as a
form of fitting counterexpression. For one thing, one can express a true
moral claim without addressing it to the wrongdoer. Joe’s customers might
simply utter their moral disapproval of Joe’s to one another or tell the
mistreated employees that they deserve better. To show that the expression
of reprobation is fitting is not yet to show that the explicit targeting of that
message at the wrongdoer is justified.

. Object of Desert: Communication of Censure

For this reason, we might replace an expressivist account of desert with a
communicative one. Mere expression does not require an audience.
Communication does. The main idea of a communicative theory of
punishment is that the wrongdoer, specifically, deserves censure. The
wrongdoer deserves to be directly addressed with message of condemna-
tion, which is appropriate to his degree of culpability. Keep in mind here
that this censure is meant to be justified on the grounds that it is
intrinsically fitting. Censuring a wrongdoer might also have good conse-
quences, such as deterrence, but for the moment we are interested in what
the wrongdoer deserves. The answer given by communicative theories is
that the wrongdoer intrinsically deserves censure.
Being targeted with censure is unpleasant. If the one censured fully
grasps the truth of what is being communicated to him – namely, that he
acted wrongly and is blameworthy for his action – then he will experience
remorse, which is a painful emotion. So, censure involves suffering. But
notice that the communicative theorist has room to argue that the wrong-
doer’s suffering is not itself the object of desert but merely a side effect of
his getting what he does deserve, namely, censure. The communicative
theorist need not value the wrongdoer’s suffering qua suffering, and so the
communicative theorist can escape the charge of bloodthirstiness.
However, one might well object that suffering is not merely a side effect
of an appropriate moral communication, as suffering is the side effect of a
tattoo. In cases of punishment, suffering is the means by which the message is


See, for example, Andrew von Hirsch, Censure and Sanctions (New York: Oxford University Press,
); and R. A. Duff, Punishment, Communication, and Community (New York: Oxford
University Press, ).

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 Justifying Social Punishment 
communicated. Joel Feinberg raises this objection in his classic article “The
Expressive Function of Punishment.” Throwing people in prison does
send a message of condemnation, but surely we could send that message
in a less violent manner. Feinberg writes, “One can imagine an elaborate
public ritual, exploiting the most trustworthy devices of religion and
mystery, music and drama, to express in the most solemn way the com-
munity's condemnation of a criminal for his dastardly deed.” “Perhaps
this is only idle fantasy,” Feinberg continues. “The only point I wish
to make here is one about the nature of the question. The problem
of justifying punishment, when it takes this form, may really be that of
justifying our particular symbols of infamy.” In our example of Joe’s
Coffee, the boycotters do not simply write a letter or perform a play to
communicate their censure. They intentionally damage Joe’s reputation in
the marketplace and reduce their revenue. What justifies sending their
message by these means?

. Object of Desert: Communication of Negative Reactive Attitudes

One response to this objection is that one cannot communicate the
appropriate message to the wrongdoer unless one communicates the angry
reactive attitudes that the culpable action deserves. Simply sending Joe’s
Coffee a letter with a dispassionate, philosophical analysis of the injustice
of their scheduling practices would fail to communicate all of what is
fitting. It would not effectively convey the moral significance of the
injustice nor the depth of the customers’ concern and disapprobation.
Joe’s Coffee deserves to be targeted with an appropriately negative attitude,
such as indignation. In this view, the object of the wrongdoer’s desert is
the attitude itself. Punishment is justified, according to this argument,
because the intentional infliction of harm effectively conveys the appro-
priate anger in a way that a coolly philosophical letter would not.
Part of the appeal of making the negative reactive attitude the object of
desert is that it helps block the objection that punishment treats the


Feinberg, “The Expressive Function of Punishment,” .

Ibid.

Another objection is: just because the message is appropriate, it does not follow that I am permitted
to deliver that message. This raises the issue of the authority to punish, which I take up in
Chapter .

Christopher Bennett, The Apology Ritual: A Philosophical Theory of Punishment (New York:
Cambridge University Press, ); and Zac Cogley, “Basic Desert of Reactive Emotions,”
Philosophical Explorations , no.  (): –.

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   
wrongdoer as a mere means, who can simply be used for the benefit of
others. Attitudes of resentment and indignation themselves include a kind
of recognition of the wrongdoer’s status. One does not resent or become
indignant with an animal or an object. These are attitudes that can be
directed intelligibly only toward a fellow moral agent, someone who stands
in relations of mutual accountability with oneself. So to hold a reactive
attitude toward a wrongdoer is itself a way of showing him respect. As P. F.
Strawson puts it, resenting someone is “the consequence of continuing to
view him as a member of the moral community; only as one who has
offended against its demands.” Indeed, failures to adopt an attitude of
resentment or indignation toward a wrongdoer, at least initially, are
worrying. They suggest that one views the wrongdoer as if he were a child
or an animal – as if he were not a fully competent member of the moral
community.
The reactive attitude account also seems to avoid the charge of blood-
thirstiness. Being targeted with an attitude like resentment or indignation
is unpleasant. But these are significantly different attitudes from malice or
spite, which aim at the degradation of their target. Resentment and
indignation engage the wrongdoer as a rational moral agent, communicat-
ing an appropriate attitude to the wrongdoer that hopefully will inspire
him to take the proper view of his past actions. If he does take a proper
view, he will feel remorse, and remorse is painful. But while this pain may
be the inevitable side effect of the successful communication of the
attitude, we need not view it as the intrinsic good sought by punishment.
In my opinion, this is a compelling defense of rebuke. Rebukes are
direct, angry communications of blame. The harms that they intentionally
inflict are limited to the harms that are inseparable from the communica-
tion of the intrinsically appropriate attitudes. Since I have argued that
rebukes are typically punishments, it is a pretty good justification of at least
this method of punishment. But notice how limited this victory is. The
account defends private rebukes but not public rebukes. After all, public
rebukes intentionally impose further harms, such as damage to reputation
and the exposure of the wrongdoer to the shaming gaze of an audience.
These go beyond the harm that is inseparable from the communication of
moral anger to the wrongdoer. The argument also falls short of defending


P. F. Strawson, “Freedom and Resentment,” Proceedings of the British Academy  (): –,
at . See also Stephen Darwall, “Justice and Retaliation,” Philosophical Papers , no.  ():
–.

Jeffrie G. Murphy and Jean Hampton, Forgiveness and Mercy (New York: Cambridge University
Press, ), –.

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 Justifying Social Punishment 
practices of pointed social avoidance, which purposefully withdraws the
benefits of cooperation and social contact, and boycotting, which directly
targets reputation and revenue.
Interestingly, R. A. Duff, who is a leading proponent of censure theories
of punishment, rejects the reactive attitude account even for the limited
case of private rebuke. Duff dislikes the suggestion that the object of
desert is resentment or indignation. In his view, intentionally penalizing
someone with one’s moral anger is a way of playing on his self-esteem, his
desire for good will, and his unconscious fears of abandonment. Emotion-
ally attacking a person in this way in order to get him to change his moral
views or his behavior amounts to an objectionable form of manipulation,
according to Duff. The one punished is treated as a mere means rather
than an end in himself.
Duff explains the sense in which targeting a wrongdoer with negative
attitudes is objectionably manipulative by claiming that it offers the
wrongdoer the wrong kind of reason for changing his behavior. The
wrongdoer is induced to improve his behavior in order to avoid unpleasant
consequences. At best, he is offered a prudential reason to behave morally.
At worst, the threats and penalties sidestep the wrongdoer’s rational
capabilities altogether and amount to a kind of “conditioning or aversion
therapy.”

. Object of Desert: Persuasion

Duff does not disapprove of delivering rebukes or punishment more
generally. What he objects to is the suggestion that what the wrongdoer
deserves is to be targeted with angry emotions. The proper view of censure,
according to Duff, is that it presents the wrongdoer with a moral reason to
change his behavior. Duff gives us the example of Jasper, who has been
sexually harassing women in his office, intimidating and humiliating them
through his sexual comments and leers. Suppose we, Jasper’s coworkers,
witness this behavior. We want Jasper to stop his harassment. We want to
protect the women in the office from harm and insult. Duff argues that in
order to treat Jasper as a rational moral agent, and not merely as a nuisance,
our goal must be that he changes his behavior for the right reason.


R. A. Duff, Trials and Punishments (New York: Cambridge University Press, ), ch. .

Ibid., –.

Ibid., .

Ibid., .

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   
We want him to treat these women decently because he comes to see that
they deserve respect, not merely because he wants to keep his job or
because he is intimidated by our anger.
When we censure Jasper, according to Duff, we are engaging him in a
kind of moral argument or dialogue. We are attempting to persuade him
to change his behavior by pointing to the real reasons for change – the
reasons we sincerely believe are the proper reasons for treating his
coworkers differently. Perhaps Jasper has not so far perceived his behavior
as an instance of bullying or oppression. We hope that, in signaling our
moral disapproval, we are directing Jasper’s attention to values that he
already shares. If he does not already share those values, then we hope that
by voicing our own commitment to those values, we will persuade him to
reevaluate the issues. But Duff argues that respectful censuring, like
persuasion more generally, also requires us to be open to Jasper’s side of
the argument. We must be prepared to listen to his excuses or justifications
for his behavior with a kind of humility that acknowledges that our own
moral judgments are fallible.
Duff’s account of moral censure as a form of persuasion is certainly
appealing. It portrays censure as a very high-minded sort of activity,
animated by concern for the well-being of the wrongdoer. Yet, intuitively,
there is a big difference between engaging in persuasion, as we normally
think of persuasion, and punishments like rebuking a wrongdoer or
boycotting a business. Persuasion can take place via a dispassionate
exchange of ideas and reasons. Rebukes express anger. Boycotts target
reputations and revenue. Persuasion tries to attract the other person to
one’s side. Punishments issue a demand. They draw a line. They press a
claim. Persuasion implies that the other person is free to disagree, though
disagreement would be mistaken and maybe even imprudent. Punish-
ments insist that the other person has done what he was not free to do
and enforce that judgment.
Communicative theorists generally argue that sometimes only punish-
ment, only the intentional infliction of harm, can communicate the
seriousness of the moral matters at issue. Words are often not strong
enough. But punishing actions, like consumer boycotts, can both convey


Ibid. See also Duff, Punishment, Communication, and Community.

Duff, Trials and Punishments, .

Cf. Brenda M. Baker, “Penance as a Model for Punishment,” Social Theory and Practice , no. 
(): –.

Duff, Punishment, Communication, and Community, . See also Hampton, “Correcting Harms
versus Righting Wrongs,” and Bennett, The Apology Ritual.

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 Justifying Social Punishment 
the depth of our moral concerns and hold the wrongdoers’ attention for
long enough to inspire change. But still, Duff interprets these punishments
as forms of persuasion.
I agree with Duff and other communicative theorists that the harsher
aspects of punishment perform communicative functions, but I believe we
must acknowledge the fact that they also operate in other, less high-
minded, more manipulative ways as well. While we may intend our
rebukes and boycotts to serve as a respectful attempt to persuade a fellow
member of the Kingdom of Ends of the error of his ways, our punishments
may instead have their effect on the wrongdoer by playing on his vulner-
abilities. We may hope to lead the wrongdoer to recognize the validity of
our claim. But we may instead merely intimidate and manipulate him.
Furthermore, we are, or should be, aware of both of these aspects of the
interaction when we engage in punishment.

. Another Option: Limit the Role of Desert

I have argued that appealing to the communication of deserved moral
judgments and attitudes is not sufficient to justify the intentional infliction
of harm on a wrongdoer. Recently, T. M. Scanlon has presented a version
of a communicative theory that suggests that we need not even try to do
so. Scanlon argues that there are two elements in punishment: a message
of condemnation and hard treatment. The wrongdoer intrinsically deserves
condemnation, and this negative desert is sufficient to justify the condem-
natory aspect of punishment. But in Scanlon’s theory it does not also
justify the hard treatment of punishment. In particular, Scanlon declines
to argue that hard treatment is justified as an expression of deserved
condemnation, since a response to wrongdoing “could express condemna-
tion without involving any form of ‘hard treatment.’” We could use
Feinberg’s rituals of music and drama, for example. Scanlon argues that the
hard treatment of punishment must be justified by something other than
desert. He appeals to “the beneficial consequences of a policy of threaten-
ing and inflicting treatment of this kind” combined with the requirement
that the one punished had a “fair opportunity to avoid” wrongdoing. In
this way, Scanlon’s defense of punishment mixes desert-based and


Scanlon, “Giving Desert Its Due.”

Ibid., .

Ibid., .

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   
instrumental considerations, such that desert justifies only the condemna-
tory aspects of punishment.
Although I also advocate a mixed rather than a purely desert-based strategy
for justifying punishment, I do not believe Scanlon’s version includes a robust
enough desert element. The trouble is that what is deserved (condemnation)
and what is received (hard treatment) are not sufficiently closely related.
While, in Scanlon’s theory, negative desert serves as a side constraint on
who receives hard treatment, the hard treatment is not itself deserved nor is
it an unavoidable side effect of the treatment that is deserved.

. Object of Desert: Censure Plus Coercive Pressure

The central flaw in all of these variations on expressivist and communicative
justifications of punishment is that they concentrate their attention on the high-
minded, symbolic aspect of punishment and ignore the ugly, coercive aspect.
But punishment has both of these sides, and if we are going to find a
justification for punishment we cannot deny the reality of the ugly side. When
communicative theorists argue that Feinberg’s imagined rituals of music and
drama would not have the ability to communicate condemnation in a suffi-
ciently powerful way and that only punishment will do, I suspect they are
sweeping coercion under the rug of symbolism. They mean, I think, that music
and drama will not keep wrongdoers in line. They are not really concerned
about communicative power. They are concerned about coercive power.
I agree with Duff, Scanlon, and others that wrongdoers deserve con-
demnation. They deserve the negative judgments and attitudes that pun-
ishment communicates. However, I do not think that this is a sufficient
account of the desert element in punishment. We need to add something
more if punishment is to be justifiable.
So let’s look at the ugly side of informal social punishments like rebukes
and boycotts. There are two things I find important. First, these punish-
ments inflict emotional pressure on the one punished. They play on the
wrongdoer’s social nature – on her need for human contact and cooper-
ation, on her desire for goodwill from her fellow creatures, on the social
underpinnings of her self-esteem, and on her propensity to mirror other
people’s disapprobation in her own psyche. Second, punishments change
the value of the wrongdoer’s choice options. Joe’s Coffee may continue to


The psychological effects of other people’s disapprobation are powerfully described by David
Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature (New York: Oxford University Press, ), and Adam
Smith, Theory of Moral Sentiments (New York: Penguin, ).

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 Justifying Social Punishment 
treat its employees unfairly, but the boycotters have increased the costs of
their doing so. A brother’s rebuke may not prevent his sister from lying in
the future, or compel her to apologize in the present, but it increases the
costs of her poor choices.
By attending to these two features of informal social punishment – the
application of emotional pressure and the manipulation of the wrongdoer’s
options – the coercive aspects of punishment come to the fore. Now,
arguably, coercion is only coercion when it is intentional. Our commu-
nicative theorist might insist that a morally virtuous punisher will intend
only persuasion and not coercion. But I find such a response disingenuous.
Punishment places emotional and practical forms of pressure on the one
punished, and we know this, and this is at least part of why we choose to
punish rather than merely to criticize. The knowing and purposeful
application of pressure to the wrongdoer separates a punishment like the
boycott of Joe’s Coffee from a merely natural penalty, such as the simple
choice to buy one’s coffee from a more congenial provider.
Punishment – not just criminal punishment but also social punish-
ment – is a form of coercion. If punishing is justifiable, then coercion must
be justifiable. If we are to avoid making the one being controlled a mere
means for the betterment of other people, then we must argue that
coercion can be deserved. How might we do this? Well, one option is
simply to argue that wrongdoers intrinsically deserve to be interfered with.
The limitation of liberty is itself the object of negative desert. Wrongdoers
intrinsically deserve to have less liberty, less freedom from manipulation,
than people who are not guilty of wrongdoing.
In support of this claim, we might cite the view, advocated by Mill and
more recently by Stephen Darwall, that moral obligations just are those


I have in mind Robert Nozick’s account of coercion, helpfully summarized here by Scott Anderson:
“P coerces Q if and only if:
. P aims to keep Q from choosing to perform action A;
. P communicates a claim to Q;
. P’s claim indicates that if Q performs A, then P will bring about some consequence that would
make Q’s A-ing less desirable to Q than Q’s not A-ing;
. P’s claim is credible to Q;
. Q does not do A;
. Part of Q’s reason for not doing A is to lessen the likelihood that P will bring about the
consequence announced in ().”
Scott Anderson, “Coercion,” in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward N. Zalta (), plato.
stanford.edu. However, I prefer dropping conditions () and (), which imply that an act counts as
coercion only if it succeeds in changing the target’s behavior. See also Joel Feinberg, Harm to Self: The
Moral Limits of the Criminal Law, vol.  (New York: Oxford University Press, ), ch. .

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   
things that people can demand from one another. For Mill, to say one is
subject to a demand is to say that one is subject to some degree of coercion
if one fails to satisfy that demand:
It is a part of the notion of Duty in every one of its forms, that a person may
rightfully be compelled to fulfil it. Duty is a thing which may be exacted from a
person.. . . Unless we think that it might be exacted from him, we do not call it his
duty.. . . I think there is no doubt that this distinction lies at the bottom of the
notions of right and wrong; that we call any conduct wrong, or employ, instead,
some other term of dislike or disparagement, according as we think that the
person ought, or ought not, to be punished for it; and we say that it would be
right to do so and so, or merely that it would be desirable or laudable, according as
we would wish to see the person whom it concerns, compelled, or only persuaded
and exhorted, to act in that manner.
In this passage, Mill is making a conceptual connection between wrong-
doing and liability to coercion. Whereas Mill ultimately defends the
worldview that connects these two concepts on utilitarian grounds, it is
open to us to instead interpret the connection in terms of desert. Wrong-
doing deserves to be met with a loss of liberty. Wrongdoing deserves
coercive interference.
In Chapter , I argued that we should not, as a matter of definition, insist
that the harms required for punishment compromise what would have
otherwise been a right. However, according to the view I am defending
here – that the object of desert in cases of wrongdoing is a limitation of
liberty – the harm does appear to touch on a right. Arguably, people
generally have a moral right not to be subjected to the intentional manip-
ulation of their emotions and their choice options, even when the manip-
ulation in question is carried out simply through speech or social
avoidance. On this interpretation, informal social punishment does involve
treating people in ways that they would normally have a moral right not to
be treated.
If this is correct, we might supplement this view of desert with
a rights-forfeiture defense of punishment. The idea here is that


John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism, in Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, vol. , ed. J. M. Robson
(Toronto: University of Toronto Press, ), ch. V; and Stephen Darwall, The Second-Person
Standpoint: Morality, Respect and Accountability (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,
), .

Mill, Utilitarianism, V..

Christopher Heath Wellman, “The Rights Forfeiture Theory of Punishment,” Ethics , no. 
(): –; and A. John Simmons, “Locke and the Right to Punish,” Philosophy and Public
Affairs  (): –.

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 Justifying Social Punishment 
the wrongdoer forfeits some portion of her rights through her own,
responsible choice to act wrongly. Forfeiture theorists have traditionally
suggested that what the wrongdoer forfeits is her right not to be
subjected to suffering. This suggestion is open to the charge of blood-
thirstiness. It suggests that the rest of us are eager to inflict suffering on
whomever loses the protection of the right, as if we cannot wait to let
out our aggression somewhere. My suggestion is instead that the thing
forfeited is some measure of liberty, some right against being inten-
tionally coerced by other people.
My version of forfeiture theory is less disturbing than the one that
focuses on suffering, but one might still object that the view implies
that the power to control other people is an intrinsically desirable
good. Are we eager to manipulate people as soon as they lose the
protection of the right? Are we thirsty, not for blood, but for
domination?
I want to acknowledge the legitimacy of this worry. As Nietzsche said,
we should be suspicious of people in whom the urge to punish is strong.
However, I hope that we can distinguish between justified punishment
and this sort of thirst for domination. While the view I am defending here
suggests that wrongdoers forfeit their right against being subjected to
coercion, I am not saying that they may be subjected to coercion in any
direction whatsoever. What the wrongdoer deserves is not manipulation
simply as such, but only manipulation toward certain ends. To fill out this
account, we must turn to the instrumental half of this mixed theory of
punishment.
This brings to a close my long and winding discussion of the object of
desert in cases of wrongdoing. I argue that what wrongdoing intrinsi-
cally deserves is both the communication of censure and coercive pres-
sure. In the end, I both agree and disagree with communicative theorists
like Duff. I agree that communication is an important part of a theory of
punishment. But communicative theorists interpret punishment simply
as moral messages to the wrongdoer. My point is that punishments are
also forms of coercion. In other words, whereas a communicative theo-
rist interprets social control as moral communication, I see certain kinds
of moral communication, like angry rebukes and boycotts, as social
control.


Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra, trans. Thomas Wayne (New York: Algora, ).

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   

4 the instrumental element in a constrained

instrumentalist approach
Joel Feinberg points out that the fact that someone deserves something
is not necessarily a conclusive reason for giving him what he deserves.
My view is that negative desert justifies interfering with the liberty of
wrongdoers only if doing so will also achieve some future good. Let’s
turn now to the forward-looking aspects of informal social punishment.
What kinds of good consequences might informal social punishment
achieve?
The first thing that comes to mind is deterrence. One possible good
effect of practices like rebuking and boycotting is that they may deter
future wrongdoing, either by the one punished or by others who wish to
avoid punishment.
We might argue further that informal social punishment is instrumental
to the maintenance of moral norms. Unless moral norms are enforced,
unless our moral demands of one another are backed up with some form of
social pressure, they will cease to effectively regulate social life. So, one
reason to engage in informal social punishment in response to moral
wrongdoing is to maintain those norms.
Punishing wrongdoers is also a means of vindicating the victims of
wrongdoing. By boycotting Joe’s Coffee, customers send the message
to the workers that they are valuable persons who deserve better treatment.
This may reinforce the workers’ self-worth and help undermine the power
of the insulting messages conveyed by their employer’s unjust actions.
When one is oneself the victim, rebuking the wrongdoer can be a means of
both defending oneself and shoring up one’s self-respect.
In some cases, punishing wrongdoers enables third parties to avoid
complicity in the wrongdoing in question. Such arguments are frequently
made in support of boycotting actions. The idea is that the consumer must
avoid contributing to the market dynamics that enable business owners to
profit from their misdeeds. Similarly, standing passively by as another
person is mistreated may itself be a way of insulting or morally abandoning


Joel Feinberg, “Justice and Personal Desert,” in Doing and Deserving: Essays in the Theory of
Responsibility (Princeton: Princeton University Press, ), –, at .

William A. Edmundson, “Civility as Political Constraint,” Res Publica , no.  (): –; and
J. R. Lucas, “Or Else,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society  (): –, at .

Cf. Hampton, “Correcting Harms versus Righting Wrongs”; Bennett, The Apology Ritual.

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 Justifying Social Punishment 
the victim. For example, studies of bullying indicate that the presence of
passive bystanders increases the psychological and social harms suffered by
the bullied children.
So, informal social punishment might provide benefits to both commu-
nities and victims. But one might object that there is still something
offensive in using the wrongdoer as a mere means to securing these benefits
to others. At this point, theorists pursuing a mixed strategy to defending
punishment standardly appeal to the desert element. It is not objectionable
to punish one person as a means to benefiting others as long as the one
punished is guilty. The guilty one has lost some measure of her right not to
be interfered with, so interfering in ways that will benefit others is not
objectionable.
In my view, this line of defense is not quite satisfying. Yes, the wrong-
doer has forfeited a measure of her liberty; she deserves to be interfered
with; but she is still a moral agent with legitimate interests and dignity. For
these reasons, I argue that any interference with the wrongdoer should be
designed with an eye to the wrongdoer’s good, as well as the good of the
victim and the community. More specifically, we should design our
interference so as to support her abilities as a moral agent and to help
her reclaim her place as a trusted member of the moral community. In
doing so, we apply coercion to the wrongdoer with the goal of bringing
about a state of affairs in which coercive interference with her would no
longer be fitting. When the punisher’s coercive interference aims at its own
cessation in this way, hopefully the punisher’s temptation to the vicious
pleasures of dominating another person will be kept in check.

5 the moral pressure theory of punishment

I suggest that the proper goal of informally socially punishing a wrong-
doer – the aim we should have when interfering with her liberty – is to
morally pressure her to make amends for her own misdeed. The pressure is
moral in the sense that it promotes a moral goal – the wrongdoer fulfilling
her obligation to make amends or “atone” – and it communicates moral
reasons for fulfilling that goal. But it is a form of pressure as well as a form

Jean Harvey, “Oppression, Moral Abandonment, and the Role of Protest,” Journal of Social
Philosophy , no.  (): –; and Margaret Urban Walker, Moral Repair: Reconstructing
Moral Relations after Wrongdoing (New York: Cambridge University Press, ).

Paul D. Flaspohler, Jennifer L. Elfstrom, Karin L. Vanderzee, Holli E. Sink, and Zachary
Birchmeier, “Stand by Me: The Effects of Peer and Teacher Support in Mitigating the Impact of
Bullying on Quality of Life,” Psychology in the Schools , no.  (): –.

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   
of communication. If we have a proper view of the obligation to atone,
then we will see that atonement serves the interests of the victim, com-
munity, and the wrongdoer herself.
In order to make amends, the wrongdoer must, by her own actions and
to whatever degree it is possible, repair whatever wrongs she has commit-
ted and harms she has caused, including the harms she has done to her
relationships of mutual respect and goodwill with other people. What the
obligation to atone requires in practice will vary from case to case,
depending on the nature and severity of the wrongs and harms, the
relationship between the wrongdoer and the victim, and the capabilities
of the wrongdoer. But the making of amends typically requires three
things from the wrongdoer: moral improvement, respectful communica-
tion, and the reparation of harm.
First, moral improvement requires ceasing the wrongful action and
committing oneself not to repeat it. The owners and managers of Joe’s
Coffee, in our example, must change their abusive scheduling practices.
But they should also recognize that their practices were unjust, not merely
bad for business. A natural consequence of recognizing their responsibility
for wrongdoing will be a feeling of guilt and remorse, but such painful
feelings are not themselves to be counted as intrinsic goods in a theory of
atonement but as side effects of moral improvement in the aftermath of
wrongdoing. The second part of the obligation to atone requires the
wrongdoers to communicate respectfully with the victims. The owners and
managers of Joe’s Coffee should apologize to their employees and assure
them that they now recognize their legitimate interests. The third part of
the obligation to atone is to repair the harms created wherever possible. For
Joe’s Coffee, this might involve paying compensation for unfairly reduced
hours or rehiring workers who quit or were fired as a result of unreasonable
scheduling practices.
Atonement benefits victims, providing them with apologies, reparations,
and some assurance against future victimization. Atonement benefits
communities by deterring wrongdoing and clarifying norms. But atone-
ment also benefits the wrongdoer. By making proper amends, the owners
and managers of Joe’s Coffee would improve themselves and reestablish
their relationships of mutual respect, goodwill, and trust with their
employees and customers.


I defend the following account of the nature of making amends in Linda Radzik, Making Amends:
Atonement in Morality, Law, and Politics (New York: Oxford University Press, ).

Ibid., –.

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 Justifying Social Punishment 
In earlier work, I presented something like this as an “atonement
theory of punishment.” But this puts the emphasis in the wrong place.
Only wrongdoers atone. The ones punishing cannot atone for them,
since atonement requires sincere changes in beliefs and attitudes and
not just in behavior. All punishers can do is to motivate atonement
through communication and the application of emotional and practical
forms of pressure. The justifiability of punishment turns on what the
punishers do.
If the communicative aspects of punishment are well designed, they will
tell the wrongdoer that his action was wrong. They will draw the wrong-
doer’s attention to the costs of his transgression, including negative reactive
attitudes, and the weakening of trust and goodwill among his fellows. Such
costs are likely even in the absence of a decision to punish; they include
what I have been calling the natural penalties of wrongdoing. But a well-
designed punishment will also tell the wrongdoer that there is something
that he can do to put things right. If the coercive aspects of punishment are
well designed, they create incentives for the wrongdoer to reform his
attitudes and behaviors, apologize, and pay reparations; and they do so
without undermining the moral capacities and motivations the wrongdoer
needs in order to atone properly.
In cases of informal social punishment, the means of coercion that
punishers are legally and morally permitted to use are unlikely to be
strong enough to compel wrongdoers to change their behaviors or pay
reparations. At least in ordinary contexts, the state will have a


Radzik, “Moral Rebukes and Social Avoidance.”

The importance of sincerity is a point on which I disagree with Duff’s “penance” account of
punishment and especially his view of apology (Duff, Punishment, Communication, and Community,
ff.). Also, Duff seems to suggest that the experience of suffering itself, and particularly the
suffering of remorse, helps satisfy the wrongdoer’s obligation to atone. In my view, the suffering of
remorse is only a side effect or symptom of the changes in attitudes that are required for atonement
(Radzik, Making Amends, –).

The moral pressure theory bears some resemblance to a moral education theory of punishment.
According to that sort of approach, the proper goal of punishment is the moral improvement of the
wrongdoer. See, for example, Jean Hampton, “The Moral Education Theory of Punishment,”
Philosophy and Public Affairs , no.  (): –. However, Hampton, who was at one time a
leading proponent of this theory, came to reject it because she felt that it did not give proper
recognition to the victims of wrongdoing (Murphy and Hampton, Forgiveness and Mercy, ).
Punishing a bully merely in order to improve the bully has benefits for her victim, if it works. But
Hampton argues that it does not send the sort of message of respect for the victim and caring about
his plight that morality requires. It does not put the harms to the victim in a central enough place.
In contrast, in pressuring the wrongdoer to make amends, punishment pressures the wrongdoer to
respond appropriately to the victim. In this way, third parties who engage in informal social
punishment show their own respect and caring for the victim.

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   
functioning monopoly on violence. Ordinary individuals interacting
with their social equals may not use physical force. But they can and
do use coercion. As Mill reminds us, while informal social penalties do
not attack the body, they attack the soul. They play on people’s
emotions and deep-seated psychological and social needs. Yet the coer-
cive power of other people’s angry words or social avoidance depends on
how much I value their good opinion, company, and cooperation and
how willing I am to exit that community and find another community to
satisfy my psychological and social needs. In these ways, I can undermine
other people’s attempts to enforce a system of norms against me through
social punishment.
The virtuous punisher should hope that the communicative aspects of
punishment will predominate over the coercive aspects. She should prefer
that the one punished will make amends for the correct, moral reasons rather
than the less worthy, prudential reasons that punishment also provides. Duff
argues that prudential reasons are the wrong kinds of reasons for the
wrongdoer to change his ways, and that to intentionally create prudential
incentives for such changes is to treat him like a dog – like an animal to be
trained rather than a person to be reasoned with. But I disagree with Duff
that offering the wrongdoer prudential reasons to change his ways is objec-
tionably disrespectful to the wrongdoer. Maintaining social cooperation,
cultivating a good reputation in the community, and preserving the goodwill
of one’s fellows are perfectly legitimate (though not always decisive) reasons
for action. Such concerns are prudential but they are not morally insig-
nificant. Joe’s Coffee’s interest in profit is more purely prudential, but it is
already a factor in its relationship with its customers, so it is hard to see the
customer’s intentional withholding of revenue as a case of treating Joe’s


John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, in Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, vol. , ed. J. M. Robson
(Toronto: University of Toronto Press, ), I..

This phenomenon is well illustrated by the use of boycotts on either side of the same-sex marriage
debate in the United States prior to its legalization in . Both sides called for boycotts against
businesses that supported what they considered to be the wrong side of the debate. The boycotted
businesses often found themselves receiving an influx of new customers or donations from people
who sympathized with their position. In some cases, business owners seemed to take pride in being
boycotted by people whose politics they despised.

Duff, Punishment, Communication, and Community, .

Cf. Baker, “Penance as a Model of Punishment”; von Hirsch, Censure and Sanctions; and Matt
Matravers, “Duff on Hard Treatment,” in Crime, Punishment and Responsibility, ed. R. Cruft,
M. Kramer and M. Reiff (New York: Oxford University Press, ), –.

Claudia Mills, “Should We Boycott Boycotts?,” Journal of Social Philosophy , no.  ():
–, at .

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 Justifying Social Punishment 
Coffee with disrespect. The coercive aspects of punishment do not neces-
sarily deny respect to the one punished.

6 conclusion
In this chapter, I have argued that the general justifying aim of informal
social punishment is to morally pressure the wrongdoer to atone. Part of
the value of identifying an account of the justifying aim of punishment is
that it can help yield a set of restrictions on actual practices and acts of
punishment. For example, if I am correct in identifying the moral pressure
to atone as the aim of informal social punishment, then it will follow that
punishing acts that undermine wrongdoer’s ability to atone, or that pile on
wrongdoers who have already atoned, will be unjustified. Such limitations
on punishment will be the focus of Chapter .
In this chapter, I have followed a mixed strategy, a version of con-
strained instrumentalism, which uses a claim about the wrongdoer’s desert
to constrain the ways in which punishment can be used to pursue good
future outcomes. In acting wrongly, one comes to deserve both censure
and a loss of liberty. Only wrongdoers may be subjected to informal social
punishment, but negative desert is not a sufficient justification for pun-
ishment. A wrongdoer may be subjected to coercion only insofar as such
an action has a reasonable chance of motivating the wrongdoer to atone. In
Chapter , I inquire into what sorts of methods and practices tend to
support or else undermine the proper aims of punishment. I also – finally –
take on the question of who has the authority to impose informal social
punishment for what sorts of moral wrongs. What I have tried to do here is
address a quite general question: the question of what – if anything – could
count as a legitimate reason for engaging in informal social punishment.
I believe that the answer that I have provided makes it plausible that
punishments like rebukes and boycotts are at least potentially permissible
and even valuable in practice.
But let me also emphasize what I have not tried to do here. I have not
offered a justification of punishment in general. I have not recommended
the moral pressure to atone as the goal of criminal punishment. Law and
morality are not coextensive. The liberal state is properly neutral among
reasonable conceptions of the good, and properly restricts its use of force to


Things can get complicated, of course. Were Joe’s customers to manipulate the profit motive in
order to get the owners and managers to do something against their sincere and reasonable moral
consciences, then the boycotters may not be treating them with respect.

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   
control its citizens’ behaviors rather than their consciences. The prospect
of the state using its monopoly on violence to press for atonement is in part
so frightening because it does not allow alleged wrongdoers sufficient
opportunity to opt out of the system of values being enforced. In contrast,
informal social penalties generally leave their targets with more latitude for
resistance.
Note further that I have not presented the moral pressure account as the
general justifying aim of formal social punishment. Here, the complication
is that there are so many different kinds of hierarchically structured
institutions that practice formal social punishment, including families,
clubs, schools, religious and political organizations, and businesses. Per-
haps some of these punishers – like parents or religious leaders – would be
justified in using coercion to motivate wrongdoers to fulfill their moral
obligation to atone, but others, like employers, arguably lack the authority
to do so. Like the state, employers might intrude too far into people’s lives
and consciences by pressing them improve. On the other hand, this could
well depend on the nature of the employment, such that members of
professions or employees who present the public face of the organization
might legitimately be held to a higher standard.
Social institutions vary so widely that I am tempted to put the topic of
formal social punishment to one side altogether. But Chapter  will show
just how hard it is to do this. As we dig into the details of practicing
informal social punishment, my examples will highlight the phenomenon
of naming and shaming in social media. Ordinary people witness someone
committing a wrong and publicly call the wrongdoer out on the social
media. If you have paid any attention to cases like these, you know what
typically comes next: the wrongdoer gets fired.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108870665.004 Published online by Cambridge University Press