Moral reform is a neglected response to wrongdoing that has been incorrectly portrayed as a practice involving illegitimate treatment of wrongdoers and as totally unsatisfying to those theorists advocating backward-looking practices such as retributive punishment. A clear explanation of the ethical legitimacy and practical necessity of the reformative techniques moral reform involves has been missed, and this paper details the design of moral reform proper in order to fill this gap in punishment theory. The moral reform of an offender is identified as a desideratum of responses to wrongdoing and it is explained what moral reform ought to entail. The claim that moral reform qualifies as the overriding aim of responses to wrongdoing is argued for on the grounds that this practice is capable of achieving all the established ends of responses to wrongdoing. The legitimate desiderata of our practices are identified as those usually selected as the ends of punishment practices, and moral reform must accomplish these if it is to be accepted. Moral reform is shown to realise the goals of punishments as the fortunate effects of what is done to achieve an offender's moral improvement and of what reformees do in taking responsibility for their actions. The suffering involved in moral reform receives particular emphasis since the practice will never satisfy unless it accommodates the widely-held intuition that the offender must suffer sufficiently as a consequence of his wrongdoing. Moral reform is further portrayed as the most meaningful practice for its ability to satisfy the appropriate needs and desires victims have in response to their victimization. A central claim of the thesis is that moral reform best serves the victim, since it most effectively relieves the victim's emotional responses to wrongdoing and is as adept as punishment at the expression of these same emotions. Reformers advocate a constructive response to wrongdoing that benefits all affected parties. / KMBT_363 / Adobe Acrobat 9.54 Paper Capture Plug-in

Punishment is a central component of humans’ psychological repertoire: the desire to punish emerges early in life and persists across cultures and development (e.g., Carlsmith et al., 2002; Hamlin et al., 2011; Henrich et al., 2010; Smith & Warneken, 2016). Although punishment is so central to the human experience, scholars across disciplines have conceptualized punishment in different ways. For instance, some scholars have conceptualized punishment as a type of behavior directed toward those who cause harm or violate social norms (e.g., Clutton-Brock & Parker, 1995; Deutchman et al., 2021) and have worked toward elucidating punishment’s instrumental value (e.g., Alschuler, 2003; Delton & Krasnow, 2017; Nagin, 1998, Zimring & Hawkins, 1995). However, other scholars have conceptualized punishment as more than just a behavior: these scholars have argued that punishment is both a behavior and a mechanism for social communication. These scholars often describe this idea as the “expressive theory of punishment” (Feinberg, 1965; Hampton, 1992; Kahan, 1996). Though past work has argued that punishment is communicative, few programs of research have empirically tested how laypeople interpret punishment’s messages. The paucity of research examining people’s understanding of punishment’s messages is not a miniscule omission. Scholars writing on theories of punishment often postulate, at least implicitly, that laypeople will understand punishment in a way that is consistent with normative theory (e.g., Bregant et al., 2020; Darley & Pittman, 2003). If this postulation is misguided, it could undermine the extent to which people view punishment policy as legitimate (e.g., Nadler, 2004; Tyler, 2006). My dissertation addresses this topic by investigating children’s and adults’ inferences about what punishment signals about punished individuals’ identities. When thinking about identity, people often reason about the current self in tandem with past and future selves (e.g., Peetz & Wilson, 2008). By extension, people may interpret punishment’s messages as communicating distinct information about different selves. I examine this possibility by investigating the inferences laypeople make about people's past, present, and future identities on the basis of punishment. Below, I describe the chapters in my dissertation, each of which consists of one manuscript within my larger program of research. Chapter 1 (Dunlea & Heiphetz, 2021-a), a theory paper, provides a conceptual foundation for the empirical portions of the dissertation. Namely, this chapter introduces the idea that certain forms of legal punishment (incarceration) are especially well-suited to communicate morally relevant information, paying special attention to the idea that such punishment communicates negative moral information about punished individuals. Chapter 2 (Dunlea & Heiphetz, 2020) builds on Chapter 1 by leveraging experimental methods to understand how laypeople understand punishment’s signals. Specifically, Chapter 2 examines children’s and adults’ inferences about what punishment signals about who a punished individual was in the past. Chapter 3 (Dunlea & Heiphetz, in press) extends the results of Chapter 2 by documenting the downstream social consequences of how people understand punishment’s past-oriented messages. Specifically, Chapter 3 examines how different messages about a punished individual’s past shape people’s attitudes toward such individuals in the present. Chapter 4 (Dunlea & Heiphetz, 2021-b) builds on Chapters 2 and 3 by investigating laypeople’s inferences about punishment’s future-oriented messages, specifically probing people’s views about what punishment might signal about who a punished individual might become. Finally, Chapter 5 (Dunlea et al., under revised review) addresses laypeople’s inferences about punishment’s future-oriented messages in a complementary way—by examining the extent to which people understand punishment as communicating messages about intergenerational immorality. That is, Chapter 5 asks whether people understand punishment as conveying morally relevant information about future generations of individuals related to punished individuals (i.e., children of incarcerated parents). Together, these chapters shed light on the origins and development of people’s reasoning about punishment’s messages. In doing so, this dissertation integrates sub-areas of psychology (social cognition, development, moral psychology) and connects psychology with related fields (e.g., philosophy, law) to answer questions central to jurisprudential inquiry.

The corporal punishment of children is being widely challenged today. Christians have traditionally followed the "spare the rod and spoil the child" approach and must respond to the new situation. Corporal punishment is part of the wider disciplinary process. It can lead to corporal abuse, but this is not a reason per se to reject it. Parents have a right to discipline their children, including the use of reasonable corporal punishment. Teachers can also use corporal punishment to enforce discipline, although its use will soon be banned in all South African schools, following world trends. Corporal punishment in the home and at school satisfies the criteria of both the deontological and teleogical approach to theological ethics. It should be retained as part of a multi-faceted approach to discipline. / Philosophy and Systematic Theology / M.Th. (Theological Ethics)

The corporal punishment of children is being widely challenged today. Christians have traditionally followed the "spare the rod and spoil the child" approach and must respond to the new situation. Corporal punishment is part of the wider disciplinary process. It can lead to corporal abuse, but this is not a reason per se to reject it. Parents have a right to discipline their children, including the use of reasonable corporal punishment. Teachers can also use corporal punishment to enforce discipline, although its use will soon be banned in all South African schools, following world trends. Corporal punishment in the home and at school satisfies the criteria of both the deontological and teleogical approach to theological ethics. It should be retained as part of a multi-faceted approach to discipline. / Philosophy and Systematic Theology / M.Th. (Theological Ethics)