Punishment and Desert Under Injustice

There is a well-documented connection between adverse social conditions and crime. In the United States, those from disadvantaged backgrounds are far more likely to come into contact with the criminal-legal system, and these individuals are overrepresented in our country's prisons. Yet explaining why it is morally troublesome to subject disadvantaged offenders to harsh penal punishment, given their adverse backgrounds, is not straightforward. One popular explanation holds that states that allow injustice lose the authority, or standing, to condemn disadvantaged offenders. As appealing as these views seem, I argue that they ultimately collapse into a general critique of state punishment. I reframe the problem as one of moral desert, arguing that social disadvantage affects the moral status of criminal wrongdoing in ways that reduce what punishment disadvantaged offenders actually deserve.