SJC Exchange Library

As our country comes to terms with the damage caused by our excessive reliance on punishment as a response to crime, the use of the criminal law to sustain racial hierarchies, and the ways the justice system has undermined our democracy and weakened communities, we must ask: what principles should guide this fundamental reexamination of a seemingly immovable status quo?

The principle of parsimony can serve as a powerful tool for interrogating the current operations of the U.S. criminal justice system. Under the classic definition of parsimony in traditional social contract theory, the state is only authorized to exercise the lightest intrusion into a person’s liberty interest that is necessary to achieve a legitimate social purpose. Any intrusion beyond what is necessary is inherently illegitimate and may even constitute state violence.