I was asked in Quora recently about the utilitarian argument in favor of punishing criminals. I'm happy with my response and I will reproduce it here. Joe the Burglar is caught red-handed trying to carry a television out of a stranger’s personal residence at 2 AM. Now: what is to be done about Joe? Should the law concern itself only with getting the television back into the hands of the rightful owner, and, say, getting Joe to pay for whatever damage he did breaking in? That would be all there is to it in a purely compensatory system of justice. But that violates our intuitions. The Joe’s of the world figure out pretty quickly that if that is the only response to their burglary, they might as well try again If they didn’t get away with it the first time they might get away with it the second, or tenth. A utilitarian will generally believe that burglary is a bad thing. After all, whatever pleasure it wins for Joe is more than made up for by (a) the pain it brings his victim, (b) th...