"Punishment and Forgiveness" by Luke Russell (keywords: Justice; Retribution; Blame; Compassion; Morality)

If you enjoy reading this, please consider becoming a Patreon member or making a donation. The Philosopher is unfunded and your support is greatly appreciated.

One morning in October 2021, in the dark hours before dawn, Abdirashid Farah Abdi was cycling to his home in Brisbane, Australia. Abdi is a refugee, a man who fled from the horror of civil war in Somalia in the 1990s and found comparative peace on the other side of the world. But on this morning, out of nowhere, he was revisited by terror. The perpetrator was Shelley Ann Alabaster. From behind the wheel of her large SUV, Alabaster first knocked Abdi off his bicycle, then chased him through suburban backyards in her vehicle, yelling that she was going to kill him. Thankfully, Abdi survived. The terrifying pursuit was captured on a GoPro camera that he had strapped to his bicycle helmet. Alabaster was arrested, pled guilty to assault occasioning bodily harm while armed, and was convicted. But this is not the end of the story. In his victim impact statement tendered to court, Abdi said that prison is “not the right place” for Alabaster. Addressing her directly, he declared, “I forgive you from the bottom of my heart and I wish you the best in life.” Abdi went on to call for the judge to show compassion. Alabaster spent 402 days in custody before the judge released her on parole, so perhaps Abdi’s request for leniency did have some effect. However, Alabaster is a New Zealand citizen, and now is at risk of being deported from Australia back to New Zealand as a result of her crime. Abdi is again publicly calling for mercy to be shown to the woman who tried to run him down. Deporting Alabaster “would be a travesty of justice,” Abdi claims. “I choose to forgive her, because I believe compassion and forgiveness is justice in itself. … It’s another form of justice.”

The story of Abdi and Alabaster is one of crime, punishment, and forgiveness. More than this, it is story in which the victim hopes that his own forgiveness of the perpetrator will reduce the punishment imposed by the state. Lawyers and criminologists will argue over whether a victim’s act of forgiveness can give the court a legally sound reason to reduce a sentence. Independent of the law, the case of Abdi and Alabaster leads us to ask some difficult philosophical questions about forgiveness. I want to explore three of them: First, what is forgiveness? Second, when should we forgive? And third, what is the relationship between forgiveness and punishment? Our answers to these questions will help us to figure out whether Abdi was morally justified in forgiving Alabaster, or whether his act of forgiveness might have been dangerous and unwise.

This philosophical journey will not take us back to Plato and Aristotle, or even to Locke, Hume, or Kant. Surprisingly, the most influential figures in the history of Western Philosophy have almost nothing to say about interpersonal forgiveness, even though forgiveness is frequently praised in our society, and even though the Christian tradition takes forgiveness to be a centrally important virtue. Contemporary moral philosophers have been thinking more closely about this topic, and it is to these philosophers that I will turn. Let us begin by seeing how they define forgiveness.

Surprisingly, the most influential figures in the history of Western Philosophy have almost nothing to say about interpersonal forgiveness

It is tempting to think that all of us already have a clear understanding of the nature of forgiveness. All of us have been wronged plenty of times, so responding to wrongdoing is a familiar part of our lives. Many of the possible responses are ways in which the victim condemns and resists the wrongdoing, or ways in which the victim holds the wrong against the perpetrator. She might do this by feeling angry and resentful, or by blaming and rebuking the wrongdoer, or by demanding an apology and compensation, or by taking revenge, or by calling for him to be ostracised. When the wrong is criminal in nature, some victims take steps to ensure that the perpetrator is punished under the law. In contrast, there are various ways in which the victim might let it go, or get over it. Forgiving is one such way in which a victim can move on from having been wronged, but philosophers take care to point out that there are several other ways of moving on that do not count as forgiving. A victim could move on by suffering amnesia and forgetting that the incident ever happened. Surely this is not forgiveness, even though the amnesiac no longer holds the wrong against the perpetrator. So, forgiving is not merely forgetting. Another, more significant, alternative to forgiving is excusing. We excuse people for what they have done when we judge that it was not really their fault, perhaps because they did it accidentally, or did not know what they were doing, or because they were coerced or blackmailed. Contemporary philosophers say that when a victim forgives, she does not excuse the wrongdoer. Rather, the forgiving victim believes that the wrongdoer had no good excuse, but she gets over it and moves on anyway.

Abdi reports that he is no longer angry with Alabaster and does not want her to receive further punishment. While Abdi uses the word “forgive” to describe what he is doing, we might wonder whether he really did forgive Alabaster, or instead excused her. It is not unusual for these two concepts to be mixed up. For example, according to the standard English translations of the Bible, when Jesus was on the cross, he said “Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do”, even though not knowing what you are doing is typically taken to be grounds for excusing rather than forgiving. Some people will be inclined to excuse Alabaster for her attempt to kill Abdi, on the grounds that Alabaster had a hard upbringing, and that she suffered from the effects of long-term drug use. If her upbringing and drug use meant that she could not control herself, then what she did was not really her fault. At one point Abdi himself expresses some sympathy for this view, claiming that Alabaster was “just a conduit.” He continues, “What attacked me, or tried to run me over that day, was mental health and drug abuse.”

On balance, though, it is not clear that Abdi is simply excusing Alabaster for what she did. The most common grounds for excusing are not present in her case. It is not plausible that Alabaster’s actions were accidental, or that she did not know what she was doing, or was being coerced, or had no choice in the matter. Remember, she pursued Abdi in her vehicle while he fled through back yards trying to escape. Plenty of people who have endured hard upbringings, who have mental health issues, and who are addicted to drugs do not engage in sustained attempts to kill strangers with their vehicle. In light of this, let us suppose that Abdi has forgiven Alabaster rather than excused her. In other words, Abdi has decided not to hold the wrong against her, even though he still concedes that Alabaster wronged him and that she is responsible for what she did.   

We have worked our way towards a provisional definition of forgiveness. For now, let us suppose that a forgiving victim still judges that he or she was culpably wronged, but withholds any further resentment, blame, punishment, and revenge in relation to this particular wrong. When you forgive, you wipe the slate clean.

Forgiveness finds some degree of support in the sacred texts of all of the major world religions

With this definition of forgiveness in hand, we can ask when forgiveness, so conceived, is morally justified. Forgiveness finds some degree of support in the sacred texts of all of the major world religions, including Abdi’s own religion of Islam, but Christianity offers the most thoroughgoing of these endorsements. Christians say that God has commanded us to forgive those who trespass against us, and many Christians insist that this forgiveness should be unconditional, in the sense that it should not depend on the wrongdoer having first felt remorse, apologised, or undergone moral reform. This unconditional forgiveness is morally admirable, according to Christians, because it is an expression of generosity and love which relieves the distress felt by the guilty party and brings about healing and peace. On this view, forgiving an unrepentant wrongdoer is even more generous, and hence even more virtuous, than forgiving someone who has already apologised, or forgiving someone only after punishment has been imposed in full. No doubt many people, whether they are Christian or not, will see Abdi’s generous and unconditional act of forgiveness as embodying this virtue, and as a source of much-needed healing in a world divided by hate.

Outside of religion, we find plenty of secular recommendations for unconditional forgiveness. Therapists often encourage their patients to forgive even the unrepentant, but they tend not to focus on the generosity of this act, nor on the benefits that flow to the wrongdoer who has been forgiven. Instead, therapists typically say that a victim ought to forgive because in doing so she sheds her own burdensome load of resentment and, in so doing, regains her own happiness. Possibly the most influential advocate of this view is Oprah Winfrey, who writes:

Forgiveness you do for you, not for the other person, and without the ability to forgive, you’re constantly giving away your power. Even if the person who hurt you is no longer physically present in your life, they might as well be because you keep giving them your power, energetically. You’ve got to set yourself free from whatever pain someone caused you so that you can be free, instead of wishing for it to be different.

Similarly, some political leaders have recommended unconditional forgiveness as the means via which a society that is mired in conflict can move towards peace and harmony. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa was set up, in part, to allow for the survivors of atrocities to forgive in the absence of punishment.

There is an enormous difference between claiming that it is often right for victims to forgive wrongdoers and claiming that it is always right for victims to forgive

If you are worried that this story about unconditional forgiveness is not just optimistic but dangerously unrealistic, you are not alone. There is an enormous difference between claiming that it is often right for victims to forgive wrongdoers and claiming that it is always right for victims to forgive, regardless of how dangerous the wrongdoer is, and regardless of whether he has undergone any moral reform. Recall that, according to our provisional definition of forgiveness, the victim who forgives thereby withholds any further resentment, blame, punishment, and revenge from the wrongdoer. Whether we ought to advocate for unconditional forgiveness seems to depend on whether those negative responses to the wrong – resenting, blaming, punishing, and exacting revenge – have morally important work to do, whether sometimes a victim needs to deploy these tools in order to protect herself and others from being victimised again. Not many philosophers speak up in favour of taking revenge, so let us set that aside. When it comes to resentment and angry blame, though, it is easy to find both advocates and detractors. For example, Martha Nussbaum and Glen Pettigrove think that resentment is frequently counterproductive and is never required, and that the most virtuous people do not resent those who wrong them. In contrast, Charles Griswold and Myisha Cherry contend that some victims are entitled to feel resentment, and that their resentment helps them to achieve a just outcome and to deter the wrongdoer from repeating the offence. Social and political movements such as #MeToo and Black Lives Matter were explicit in their attempt to stoke and harness this kind of righteous anger to good effect.

Similarly, blame and punishment seem to be defensible in some cases. This is not to say that current practices of legally imposed punishment and incarceration are even close to perfect. You might think that the war on drugs in the United States has been a disaster, for instance, but still believe that serial killers ought to be locked away, that stalkers should be issued with restraining orders, and that drunk drivers ought to lose their licenses. It is also worth noting that some kinds of punishment do not involve the state or other institutions. Sometimes a victim herself punishes the wrongdoer directly. This kind of interpersonal punishment is often denigrated as revenge, which makes it sound as though it must be hateful, disproportionate, and unhinged. Clearly, though, interpersonal punishment can be proportionate and can be administered calmly and out of an impartial desire that justice be done. Someone who is a staunch critic of institutional punishment might defend the legitimacy of various kinds of interpersonal punishment, such as shaming and ostracising wrongdoers. In other words, there is plenty of scope for criticising various ways in which we punish while also thinking that punishment is sometimes justified.  

Someone who is a staunch critic of institutional punishment might defend the legitimacy of various kinds of interpersonal punishment, such as shaming and ostracising wrongdoers.

Perhaps the best-known justification of punishment is that offered by retributivists, who claim that extreme wrongdoers deserve to suffer punishment in order to offset their wrongdoing, or to rebalance the scales of justice. If this is true, and if forgiving prevents victims from blaming and punishing, then it looks as though unconditional forgiveness will sometimes stand in the way of justice. Retributivism has many critics. Some of these critics are inconsistent, calling for an end to retributive punishment when seeking to bolster their progressive bona fides, and then, in the next breath, delighting in the fact that Harvey Weinstein has been locked away. But even without relying on retributivism, we could argue that blame and punishment are sometimes morally required so as to protect vulnerable members of the community from repeat offenders. An unreformed child sex offender poses a great risk to others, and we are justified in incarcerating him against his will in order to stop him from moving on to new victims. If forgiveness is incompatible with blaming and punishing, we might conclude that it would be too dangerous to forgive someone like this. Philosophers including Pamela Hieronymi and Charles Griswold, have argued that the Christian ideal of unconditional forgiveness ought to be rejected in favour of a more cautious and conditional ideal: that we should forgive only when it is safe to do so. Perhaps when the wrongdoing in question is minor in scale, it will be permissible to forgive an unrepentant wrongdoer. When the wrongdoing is more significant, though, it might be safe to forgive only when the wrongdoer has sincerely apologised and has undergone moral reform.

What would this ideal of cautious forgiveness lead us to think about Abdi’s decision to forgive Alabaster? The answer to this question is far from obvious. Alabaster’s wrongdoing was not minor in scale. She threatened to kill him, and pursued him in a way that suggested that she made the threat in earnest. This is not the kind of thing that should be brushed off lightly. Alabaster was apologetic and expressed remorse, but how can we tell whether this was a sign of deeper moral reform, or whether it was a strategic convenience that floats on the surface of an unchanged character? We are not well-positioned to know how likely it is that Alabaster will reoffend, nor whether incarceration would help her to change her ways. Critics of incarceration have long argued that prison is a “school for crime”, and generally does not function as a deterrent, but it is undeniable that an incarcerated person cannot offend against the broader community while locked away. Given the uncertainty about the outcome in this case, it seems that Abdi is taking a risk in forgiving Alabaster. He may well come to regret it if Alabaster promptly returns to her old pattern of behaviour.

Yet Abdi himself suggests that he is not ignoring the risk of reoffence. He thinks that his generous act of forgiveness will actually help Alabaster to see the light and change her ways. In his statement, Abdi says to Alabaster “I [am] pleading with you to take this opportunity to seek help and transform your life for better”. Moreover, Abdi’s experience with civil war in Somalia had led him to believe that retribution will not help. He says, “[T]he best way to disarm people of their rage, their anger, is through love, compassion and forgiveness …. I don’t believe in harming anybody.” Philosophers have called this proleptic forgiveness; that is, forgiveness that is not triggered by a recognition of the fact that the wrongdoer has felt remorse and undergone reform, but forgiveness that is designed to bring about this remorse and reform. Even if Abdi’s act of forgiveness is intended to be proleptic, it still seems to involve some risk. Unearned forgiveness may strike some offenders as a startling act of generosity that reconnects them to the community, but it will be used by others as a free pass. An advocate of the moral ideal of cautious forgiveness would probably encourage Abdi not to rush into this, and to forgive only when Alabaster has provided strong evidence that she is no longer a risk to the community.

Forgiveness is more of an emotional change in the victim, rather than a change in the way that the victim acts towards the wrongdoer

Where does this leave advocates of unconditional forgiveness? One option would be for them to claim that it is the state which bears responsibility for punishment, not the victim. If the state alone is supposed to administer justice and protect the community from reoffence, this would free up the scope for victims like Abdi to choose to forgive. This view is defended by the philosopher Aurel Kolnai, who argues that forgiveness and punishment are completely independent of each other, and that the decision to forgive or not to forgive does not depend on this kind of calculation of risk. But surely this argument is convincing only in a limited range of circumstances. Sometimes the police and the courts can be counted on to step in and impose punishment independent of the victim’s actions and attitudes, allowing victims to forgive without adding to the risk of reoffence. Yet often the state will not do so. Perhaps the wrong action in question is not sufficiently severe as to deserve criminalisation. Perhaps the state has misguided or outdated laws that fail to criminalise some genuinely extreme kinds of wrongdoing. It could be that legal institutions are unlikely to secure convictions for some kinds of criminalised wrongdoing. And often wrongdoing will be punished by the state only if an allegation is made by the victim herself, or if that victim provides damning testimony. In cases like these, the wrongdoer will be punished only if the victim steps up and imposes that punishment herself, or at least participates in the process. Sometimes, then, a victim who forgives and refuses to participate in the imposition of punishment seems to be increasing the risk that justice will not be done, and that the wrongdoer will reoffend.

However, some philosophers who advocate unconditional forgiveness will claim that this whole argument is misguided. Lucy Allais and Glen Pettigrove, for example, say that it is not prohibitively dangerous to forgive unreformed wrongdoers, and that the illusion of risk here rests on a misleading conception of forgiveness. According to our provisional definition, the victim who forgives thereby withholds further resentment, blame, punishment, and revenge. In forgiving, the victim wipes the state clean, resets, and allows both parties to move on and start afresh. But Allais and Pettigrove claim instead that forgiving only requires the removal of resentment, blame, and revenge, not the removal of punishment. Forgiveness is more of an emotional change in the victim, or a change in the way that the victim feels about the wrongdoer, rather than a change in the way that the victim acts towards the wrongdoer. If this is correct, then our earlier provisional definition of forgiveness was badly off-target. Forgiveness is only a partial wiping clean of the slate.

On Allais’ and Pettigrove’s definition of forgiveness, it is plausible that a victim can forgive a dangerous and unrepentant wrongdoer without facilitating reoffence. This is because the victim can forgive while continuing to resist the wrongdoer in ways that will protect the community; in extreme cases, by ensuring that the wrongdoer is locked away where he can do far less damage. Allais and Pettigrove say that we should not ask whether we should either forgive or punish, we ought to ask whether we should forgive and/or punish.

Next time you hear someone recommending that we forgive those who wrong us, you ought to ask for clarification: What exactly do you mean by “forgive”?

This way of thinking about forgiveness was exemplified during the trial of the South African sprinter Oscar Pistorius, who killed his partner Reeva Steenkamp by shooting her through the toilet door in their own home. Pistorius consistently denied any wrongdoing, claiming that he thought that he was shooting a home invader who was hiding in the bathroom. Reeva’s mother, June Steenkamp, clearly believed that Pistorius was lying and was guilty of murder. She wanted him to be punished to the full extent under the law. But when journalists asked June Steenkamp before the trial whether she had forgiven Pistorius, she said, “I don’t hate Oscar …. I’ve forgiven him. I have to – that’s my religion. But I am determined to face him and reclaim my daughter.” Clearly, Steenkamp believes that she can forgive while not letting the wrongdoer off the hook, and while fighting for him to be held to account. If this is correct, it seems that the moral ideal of unconditional forgiveness can be upheld without facilitating reoffence.

But is this a plausible definition of forgiveness? Has June Steenkamp genuinely moved on, in the relevant sense of that phrase? Can it be true that she has already forgiven the man who took away her daughter’s life while she continues to do everything that she can to ensure that he is convicted and locked away? Some philosophers would say that whatever Steenkamp is doing here, it is not really forgiving. Certainly, Steenkamp’s attitude towards Pistorius bears little resemblance to Abdi’s stance towards Alabaster, which includes his desire that she is exempted from any further retribution. When Abdi claims that compassion and forgiveness is justice in itself, he is suggesting that forgiveness is an alternative to punishment, not something that could be combined with punishment. But which definition of forgiveness is correct? Next time you hear someone recommending that we forgive those who wrong us, you ought to ask for clarification: What exactly do you mean by “forgive”? 

All quotes from Abdirashid Farah Abdi were taken from Joe Hinchliffe’s 2022 article,“‘I choose to forgive’: Brisbane cyclist explains why he sought leniency for driver who tried to mow him down” (published on 22^nd December 2022 in the Guardian).

Luke Russell is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Sydney. He works on various topics in moral philosophy, including evil, forgiveness, virtue, and vice. His latest book, Real Forgiveness, is published by Oxford University Press. You can find his academic homepage here.

---

If you enjoyed reading this, please consider becoming a Patreon member or making a donation. The Philosopher is unfunded and your support is greatly appreciated