Virtue Plea bargaining discourages virtue in the criminal justice system by rewarding dishonesty. Ingram 13. Ingram, Andrew. Department of Philosophy UT Austin. (Moral) Prisoner's “A Dilemma: Character Ethics and Plea Ohio State Journal of Criminal Law, Vol. 11, Bargaining.” No. 1, 2013. [Premier] Now there are some philosophers and lay people who may profess not to care about character. On the other hand, there are some who care about character a great deal. Though it is not a that the purpose of the state is the development of virtue in commonly held position today, there have been some thinkers who argued the citizens.23 the objective of the ideal state is to facilitate and cultivate the For these theorists, development of virtuous individuals. A justice system which This principle would extend to criminal-justice policy. deliberately took steps with a high chance of rewarding dishonesty would not be in keeping with the criteria for criminal justice in the character-building state. the state would be sending At a minimum, the wrong message to its citizens, declaring that it cares not for virtue and vice and will nonchalantly punish the relatively virtuous more than the comparatively vicious. Beyond this, there is the the state is encouraging vice and discouraging virtue by incentivizing the one and problem that penalizing the other. Strictly speaking, this is not my thesis, although it is suggested by the same phenomenon. The traditional position in virtue ethics is that virtuous actions build virtue and vicious actions build vice—just like other habits. From the perspective of the character-building state, it is obviously unacceptable for it to be encouraging betrayal given that such acts nourish bad character.
Virtue Plea bargaining discourages virtue in the criminal justice system by rewarding dishonesty. Ingram 13. Ingram, Andrew. Department of Philosophy UT Austin. “A (Moral) Prisoner's Dilemma: Character Ethics and Plea Bargaining.” Ohio State Journal of Criminal Law, Vol. 11, No. 1, 2013. [Premier] Now there are some philosophers and lay people who may profess not to care about character. On the other hand, there are some who care about character a great deal. Though it is not a commonly held position today, there have been some thinkers who argued that the purpose of the state is the development of virtue in the citizens.23 For these theorists, the objective of the ideal state is to facilitate and cultivate the development of virtuous individuals. This principle would extend to criminal-justice policy. A justice system which deliberately took steps with a high chance of rewarding dishonesty would not be in keeping with the criteria for criminal justice in the character-building state. At a minimum, the state would be sending the wrong message to its citizens, declaring that it cares not for virtue and vice and will nonchalantly punish the relatively virtuous more than the comparatively vicious. Beyond this, there is the problem that the state is encouraging vice and discouraging virtue by incentivizing the one and penalizing the other. Strictly speaking, this is not my thesis, although it is suggested by the same phenomenon. The traditional position in virtue ethics is that virtuous actions build virtue and vicious actions build vice—just like other habits. From the perspective of the character-building state, it is obviously unacceptable for it to be encouraging betrayal given that such acts nourish bad character.
Premier-Debate-Brief-JF18.docx