The Utilitarian Penal System In Bentham And J. S. Mill

Utilitarianism is made up of a few defining factors, maximizing pleasure and minimizing pain and making decisions based on the premise of creating the greatest amount of pleasure for the greatest amount of people. These factors make it hard to picture what a penal system under this kind of political theory would look like. The characteristics of a utilitarian penal system are outlined in the works of Bentham and J. S. Mill. Bentham lays out the guidelines for what kind of sentences would be administered under this system and what the purpose of punishment is. Mill outlines the specifics of what crimes would be considered serious crimes and adds to the foundation set by Bentham for what kind of sentences would be administered to these crimes.

We see that because the purpose of punishment is to deter offenders from committing the same crime again, this creates a system where the sentence must be equivalent to the crime committed. By having sentences that make examples out of people we see the strictness for these sentences comes from the purpose of protecting the good of the community as a whole. Bentham reasons that sentences must be administered in this fashion because then the crime can receive no additional value. Mill even goes as far to say that someone can be sentenced not only for their actions, but their inactions as well. An example of a sentence is: if someone if someone is found guilty on every ground of a “corruptor of youth” then they should be put to death. Bentham and Mill both uphold the standard for administering sentences correlates with the utilitarian purpose of

Mill makes various cases for what would constitute as serious crimes under a utilitarian penal system. He also goes into defining what a moral offense is, for Mill this one of the worst type of offenses that someone can commit. While, Mill believes that it is important for people to be able to freely form and express their opinions, he believes that the worst type of offense is to “…stigmatise those who hold a contrary opinion as bad and immoral men.” because by doing this you would be imposing your opinion and beliefs on another instead of allowing them to form their own, which would be imposing on the growth of the individual and social progress. Another moral offense that is mentioned by Mill is that of bringing a child into this world without being able to provide for it constitutes as a moral crime because you are denying that child the proper and instruction and training for their mind as well as food for themselves. Mill does not specify what the punishment for this crime would be, but he does mention that it would then be the responsibility of the state to care for the child. Mill even declares that acts committed while in an inebriated state should be placed under special legal restriction. The reasoning behind this is because Mill believes that, if the act committed