ABSTRACT
There is an idea that the moral valence of a society can be determined by the way it treats its criminals. Although this is something of a sound bite for the penal reformists, this test of the general level of collective decency is actually quite sophisticated. By and large, the criminal population themselves will have acted in a morally reprehensible way, at least in relation to the index offence for which they are detained. They will be guilty of riding roughshod over the rights of their fellow man, and in so doing might be argued to have surrendered any claim to ethical treatment by the society that they have offended. The concept of morality seems never far from the surface in the management of dangerous people by criminal justice agencies. For example, the moral questions raised by accounts of offending have led to an understanding of psychopathy that proposes the syndrome to be a disorder of moral development. While this may be supported by a contemporary psychological meta-theory, of course the notion of criminals as in some way morally bankrupt or degenerate is traditional. The UK Prison Act that requires a vicar to be retained for a prison to operate articulates this perspective, as do the variety of missions to the ‘fallen’.
