Because Simester & von Hirsch explicitly sign up to an instrumental principle, their discussion of remote harms is best interpreted as of relevance not to the harm principle but to another principle they endorse, the so-called wrongfulness constraint. Scope of Liberties The Harm Principle According to Mill, all restraint, qua restraint, is evil and leaving people to themselves is always better, ceteris paribus, than controlling them.1 Recognising that other things are not always equal, Mill. If one endorses an instrumental principle, the relevant question is not whether the conduct in question brings about harm but whether criminalization of that conduct is likely to prevent harm. Note, however, that this worry about the type of connection needed between D's actions and particular harms is a worry only if one endorses an act-centered principle. > these relate to people that obstruct our attempt to save those under threat or simply so placed that we cannot proceed without harming them. The harm principle is often explained as your right to swing your fist ends where my nose begins. People can also be casually causally related to our ability to save those under risk of harm. The authors claim that cases of this type “do not fit neatly within the Harm Principle,” such that an “extended” version of that principle is required such a principle permits criminalization of remotely harmful acts, but only where D can be held responsible for the harm id. Related to the cause and existence of situation which the victim becokemes at risk > relates to how the torture victim initiates the harm pg 5 2. Remote harm occurs when D's action leads to harm only via some “contingency,” such as a “mediating intervention” by some other person. For discussion of the relationship between retributivist theories of punishment and various harm principles, see Tomlin, Patrick, Retributivists! The Harm Principle Is Not for You, 124 Ethics 272 ( 2014) Google Scholar.ĥ3 Simester & von Hirsch's discussion of so-called remote harms may also seem to suggest that they endorse an act-centered principle. And this makes it much less likely that our reasons to impose deserved harms could themselves defeat the reasons not to criminalize given by the other harms that criminalization brings about. If this is right, even deserved punitive harms are harms the state has reason to avoid. Even if there are impersonal reasons to impose harm on offenders who deserve it-reasons that derive from the value of doing retributive justice-there may also be personal reasons not to impose harm on those same offenders-reasons that derive from the fact that all harm is bad for the person harmed. It might be said that the state has reasons of justice to impose said harms, not reasons to avoid imposing them for which it must struggle to compensate perhaps conforming to the former reasons can sometimes justify criminalization even if no harm principle is satisfied. the Harm Principle, assuming that there was some probability that they would have brought about the appropriate changes in him. 39 One might reply that in a just legal system, punitive harms are deserved by those on whom they are inflicted and that inflicting deserved harm is an unqualified good.
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