Choices and responsibility

People think of punishment and other legal action as a response to an individual's choices: "If you choose to do something bad, you deserve to have something bad happen to you." "If you made a choice that causes something to be needed, you must provide that something." People think of it as if the choices made by the person were all that mattered.

Really, though, there are many instances where some of the things that make a great difference are not choice, but pure chance.

Think of paternity suits. Suppose the mother doesn't know who the father of her child is, but knows it could be any of three different men. Those men all did the same thing, all made the same choices, and all had the same chance of being the father.

But only one of them will have to pay child support, because only one of them is the father. Random chance, not choice, made that one the father, and thus it is random chance, not choice, that decides which one will have to face the consequences for his choices once the DNA test results come out. The others, who made the same choice, will not have to do anything, simply because they were lucky.

Or consider a traffic accident between a bicycle and a car, in which the cyclist's head hits the side of the car with great force. If the cyclist is wearing a helmet, he's likely to survive; if he isn't wearing a helmet, he's likely to die.

In either case, the law will try to decide whether or not the motorist is at fault for the collision, but in one case the law will be trying to decide responsibility for a death, and in the other case it will only be trying to decide responsibility for an injury.

Suppose that the law decides that the motorist was at fault. In that case, he will face much more severe consequences if he is at fault for a death than if he is at fault for an injury... even though his choices were exactly the same in both cases, and the choice that made the difference was not the motorist's choice at all, but the cyclist's choice of whether or not to wear a helmet.

(This argument, by the way, was put forth by my brother, an avid cyclist, to illustrate the fact that wearing an helmet is not just a personal choice that affects only the wearer-- it can also make a great difference to a complete stranger.)

Furthermore, consider the fact that attempted crimes are punished much less severely than actual crimes. Attempting to commit a crime involves all the same choices that committing a crime does-- the difference is made by forces outside the criminal's control that do or do not prevent him from succeeding.

Clearly, punishment makes no sense as retribution or revenge. The explanation for punishment is not "If you choose to do something bad, you deserve to have something bad happen to you, that's just the way it is." That's illogical because no one can explain why... and because, as I've explained, the law considers some actions more punishable than others even when the choices are the same.

A more reasonable explanation is "If people have to face legal consequences for what they do, then people will think more carefully about the choices they make." This works even with the knowledge that chance, or another person's choice, could affect the outcome. The thought of child support can make a man think before sleeping with a woman, because it's possible that he could become the father of her child. The thought of responsibility for an accident can make someone drive carefully, even though an accident will not necessarily kill someone. The thought of jail can keep people from even trying to commit crimes, whether they would succeed or not.