Utilitarian Perception of Punishment: A Comparative Study of Utilitarian Punishment in Western and Islamic Criminal Justice

• In Event: Perceptions of Punitiveness, Punishment, and Justice

Abstract

Using a penal arithmetic, Jeremy Bentham defends a punishment whose pain overweighs the potential pleasure of committing an offense. To determine an individual's pleasure or pain derived from an act, Bentham introduces seven variables: Intensity, duration, certainty, propinquity, fecundity, purity and extent. It is interesting to find that these seven variables can also be seen in Islamic criminal justice. However, in the latter the meaning and the limit of these variables are different from Bentham's definition. Additionally, Bentham's theory of punishment embraces the principle of utility, which is central in utilitarian theories of punishment. Application of the principle of utility in Islamic criminal justice can result in different perception of punishment considering the meaning of utility in a non-secular context.
This paper will begin by examining the notion of utility in western and Islamic criminal justice and then proceeds to compare these seven variables in Bentham's theory of punishment and Islamic criminal justice.

Author

• Rahim Foroughi Nik, University of Nantes, France