Jeremy Bentham

Jeremy Bentham (b. 1748–d. 1832) was an English philosopher and social and legal reformer who wrote on such subjects as moral philosophy, criminal jurisprudence, and penology. In his best-known work, An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, published in 1789, Bentham proposed his theory of utilitarianism based on the principle of “the greatest happiness for the greatest number.” For him, any social action or piece of legislation that does not maximize the greatest happiness was morally and legally wrong. In his attempt to reform the legal and penal systems of his time, Bentham rejected their capricious application of law and their cruel application of punishment. Through the principle of utility, he proposed to create a new legal system in which the main goal was security: the protection of life and property. Bentham viewed people as rational actors who hedonistically pursue pleasure and avoid pain. For him, all behavior—criminal and noncriminal—could be assessed on the rightness or wrongness, the happiness or unhappiness that it produces. He developed the felicific (“happiness-making”) calculus to measure the ratio of pleasure to pain resulting from a given criminal act. Since potential offenders mentally appraise the pleasures and pains derived from committing a crime, the felicific calculus would determine the amount of punishment necessary to deter the crime. However, given that punishment is itself an evil, it must be imposed minimally, proportionately, and only insofar as it helps to prevent some greater evil. Applied in this way, Bentham believed that punishment could make a person’s pursuit of their own happiness commensurate with the best interests of society in general. Later in his career, Bentham proposed the Panopticon (Greek, meaning “all seeing”), a model prison design that consisted of a multi-tiered circular building with individual cells around the circumference. Its architectural construction made it so that every cell could be visible, and the inmates continually observed, from a centrally located inspection tower. Bentham’s conceptual framework concerning the utility of criminal behavior has had extensive implications in the fields of criminal justice, particularly crime reduction and prevention, and in penology. His ideas have influenced several varieties of criminological theories, especially rational choice theory, routine activities theory, and deterrence theory. The breadth of Bentham’s thought throughout his long career ranged from his moral philosophy to his rationale of punishment, from the codification of law to prison reform. His thinking also underwent transformation as in, for example, his preferred forms of legal sanctions: from corporal punishments to incarceration to banishment and fining.