Affirmative Action in Criminal Justice

Even if a hiring process is merit-based and non-discriminatory, it may still fail to ensure substantive fairness if some applicants lacked a fair opportunity to develop their qualifications to compete. A familiar potential remedy for the problem is 'affirmative action', in the sense of preferential treatment for job candidates who lacked a fair opportunity to develop their job qualifications. I defend two analogous contentions about criminal justice. Even if criminal sentencing is formally fair-ie free of discrimination and bias-it may still be substantively unfair because some disadvantaged offenders have lacked a fair opportunity to develop their capacities and structure their choice environments to fortify themselves against resorting to crime. And the criminal justice system might implement a form of 'affirmative action in criminal justice' by mitigating the punishment of offenders who are culpable for crimes but lacked a fair opportunity to avoid becoming so.