Justice

===Utilitarianism===
According to the utilitarian, justice requires the maximization of the total or average welfare across all relevant individuals. Punishment fights crime in three ways:<ref>{{Cite web |title=Punishment {{!}} Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy |url=https://iep.utm.edu/punishme/ |access-date=2023-10-05 |language=en-US}}</ref>
# ''[[Deterrence (legal)|Deterrence]]''. The credible [[coercion|threat]] of punishment might lead people to make different choices; well-designed threats might lead people to make choices that maximize welfare. This matches some strong [[intuition]]s about just punishment: that it should generally be proportional to the crime.
# ''[[Rehabilitation (penology)|Rehabilitation]]''. Punishment might make "bad people" into "better" ones. For the utilitarian, all that "bad person" can mean is "person who's likely to cause unwanted things (like suffering)". So, utilitarianism could recommend punishment that changes someone such that they are less likely to cause bad things.
# ''[[Incapacitation (penology)|Security/Incapacitation]]''. Perhaps there are people who are irredeemable causers of bad things. If so, [[Prison|imprisoning]] them might maximize welfare by limiting their opportunities to cause harm and therefore the benefit lies within protecting society.
So, the reason for punishment is the maximization of welfare, and punishment should be of whomever, and of whatever form and severity, are needed to meet that goal. This may sometimes justify punishing the innocent, or inflicting disproportionately severe punishments, when that will have the best consequences overall (perhaps executing a few suspected [[Shoplifting|shoplifters]] live on television would be an effective deterrent to shoplifting, for instance). It also suggests that punishment might turn out ''never'' to be right, depending on the facts about what actual consequences it has.<ref>C.L. Ten, 'Crime and Punishment' in Peter Singer ed., ''A Companion to Ethics'' (Oxford: [[Wiley-Blackwell|Blackwell Publishing]], 1993): 366–372.</ref>