Facebook, Sentencing and Moral Luck

• August 26, 2011
• 41 notes
• #riots
• #uk
• #sentencing
• #ethics
• #moral luck
• #philosophy
• #punishment

Following the riots, many people have been disturbed at the sentences handed to a couple of men who posted messages to Facebook encouraging people to start rioting during the recent, short, period of UK city riots. One of them went so far as to arrange for people to meet in a particular place, ready to riot, and was arrested by the police when he got there.

People make the point that neither of these two actually managed to start a riot and therefore, it seems harsh to punish them with four year prison sentences.

I disagree, since the only thing that protected these people from being responsible for the violence and destruction seen in many other places across the country was luck. This is studied in ethics, and is referred to as ‘Moral Luck’.

The Wikipedia article starts with the description:

“Moral luck describes circumstances whereby a moral agent is assigned moral blame or praise for an action or its consequences even though it is clear that said agent did not have full control over either the action or its consequences.”

In this case, the consequence was no riot. However, the chance that the ‘agents’ took was that there was a riot. In fact at the time of these riots across the UK, one could argue that the chance of them starting a riot on that day, at that time, was much higher than it would have been at any other time. They could, and should have predicted the chance they were taking of starting a riot. I would go so far to say that at least one of them (the one who turned up, ready to riot) absolutely had the intention of starting a riot, and the only thing that kept him from doing so was the fact that his friends on Facebook either didn’t fancy it, couldn’t be bothered, or didn’t like him very much.

A Thought Experiment

Imagine two men. One calls around his friends, intending to get a large group together ready to steal some good, and smash up some property. They, in turn, call other friends, and a few hours later, a crowd are walking down the street, destroying things, harming people and property.

Another sends an invitation out on Facebook. In the invitation, it explains that he is intending to meet at a particular spot, armed, and ready riot, as has been happening across the country on the preceding two nights. However, no-one turns up.

Is one of those men, in a moral sense, better than the other? One is more able to bring his ideas to fruition, granted, but both had the same intent, and the outcomes in both situations could have been extremely similar.

Punishment

Should the first be punished more harshly because he was successful? Perhaps so. From the perspective of protecting the public, a competent criminal might well be more dangerous than an incompetent one (although it’s not as simple as that - there’s more on public protection below). However, if prison is seen as a means of punishment, what is the point in punishing two people with exactly the same intentions with wildly different sentences? Surely the message that the justice system should send is that if you can foresee what the likely consequences of your actions might be, and those outcomes are bad for society, then you should expect to be punished. The alternative appears to be that, if your incompetence, or pure luck, happens to protect you, then you may either get away scot free, or with minimal punishment.

Take a look at an imagined split of the risk in this case:

1. 25% Chance that you will start a riot and be caught
2. 25% Chance that you will start a riot and not be caught
3. 25% Chance that you will not start a riot and not be caught
4. 25% Chance that you will not start a riot and be caught

If you argue that, if you don’t start a riot, then you shouldn’t be punished (or your punishment should be light) then with the above split of chances, you only get punishment for your actions 25% of the time.

However, if you argue that you it is irrelevant if you are successful in starting a riot, you should be punished for your intent (assuming that intent can be shown beyond a reasonable doubt), then you would be punished 50% of the time (since you still can’t be punished if you’re not caught).

Presumably, what you’re aiming at, if you’re a potential riot-starter, ideally is option 2, but option 3 would do. However, if you don’t punish option 4, then that’s perfectly acceptable to the potential riot-starter as well, making starting a riot a pretty good thing to try.

That, to me, seems entirely contrary to everything that the justice system is supposed to be there for - it fails to protect the public and it fails to punish wrongdoing.

I don’t, therefore, have much sympathy for these men. They knew the risk they were taking, and they chose to take it. It seems absurd now to claim that they somehow are less responsible for their actions, purely because of their incompetence, or luck.