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.