Abstract
There is a popular saying: “If you do the crime, then you must do the time.” Here the word “time” refers to the time spent in prison as punishment for the crime in question. And so the saying means this: if you commit a crime of some sort, then you must suffer the associated punishment. It’s an interesting saying. I’m not sure just what is intended by it. Is it that, if you choose to commit a crime, then you ought to be prepared in advance to undergo the punishment? That you ought to accept that the punishment is justified? Or simply that you ought to undergo it, whether you are prepared for it or accept it? Well, no matter. I won’t try to settle this issue here, interesting as it is, because that’s not the topic of this paper. I mention it only because my title may have suggested it. The “time” in the title refers not to the time spent in prison, that is, to the duration of punishment, but rather to the time at which punishment is initiated. As a matter of at least practical necessity, this time is distinct from the time at which the crime at issue is committed. The question to be addressed here is this: what relevance, if any, does this discrepancy in times have to the moral justification of punishment?
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Zimmerman, M.J. (2003). Time and Punishment. In: Dyke, H. (eds) Time and Ethics: Essays at the Intersection. Library of Ethics and Applied Philosophy, vol 14. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-3530-8_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-3530-8_5
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