报应仅仅决定刑罚的上限？|《新刑法评论》2021年第3期

新刑法评论New Criminal Law Review
2021  Vol. 24, Issue 3  

Editor’s Introduction: New Topics in Sentencing Theory

编者导言：量刑理论的新课题

作者：Jacob Bronsther

Algorithmic Decision-Making When Humans Disagree on Ends

目标分歧时的算法决策

作者：Kiel Brennan-Marquez和 Vincent Chiao

摘要：哪些口译任务应当委派给机器？这一问题已经成为了“技术治理”的辩论焦点。一个熟悉回答是，虽然机器能够执行结果没有争议的任务，但对于人们无法达成共识的任务，并不适合委派给机器。毕竟，如果连人类专家都无法对这一任务的性质达成共识，那么我们又怎能于此期待机器呢？在本文中，我们转变了这一立场。当人们不能对一个任务的性质达成共识时，这其实正是将这一任务委派给机器的初步理由，而不是反对委派的理由。其中的原因与公平有关：受影响的当事人要有能力去预测特定案件的结果。尚未决定的决策环境——其中人们对决策目标存在分歧——本质上是不可预测的，因为，在任何的既定情形下，可能出现的结果的分布取决于特定决策者对相关目标的看法。从非重复玩家的角度来看，这为决策过程注入了不可简化的随机动态。从机器决策聚合一项任务相关目标的不同观点的意义上来说，它们保证了可预测性这一特定维度上的进步。无论机器决策的其他优点与缺点是什么，这一增益都应该被认识到并考虑到治理中。本文有两个部分。首先，我们区分决定性与确定性，以此作为认知属性并形成关于决策类型的分类法。在第二部分，我们将通过一个关于刑事量刑的案例研究，把这一正式的观点生动地表达出来。

Which interpretive tasks should be delegated to machines? This question has become a focal point of “tech governance” debates. One familiar answer is that while machines are capable of implementing tasks whose ends are uncontroversial, machine delegation is inappropriate for tasks that elude human consensus. After all, if human experts cannot agree about the nature of a task, what hope is there for machines?

Here, we turn this position around. When humans disagree about the nature of a task, that should be prima facie grounds for machine delegation, not against it. The reason has to do with fairness: affected parties should be able to predict the outcomes of particular cases. Indeterminate decision-making environments—those in which human disagree about ends—are inherently unpredictable in that, for any given case, the distribution of likely outcomes will depend on a specific decision maker’s view of the relevant end. This injects an irreducible dynamic of randomization into the decision-making process from the perspective of non-repeat players. To the extent machine decisions aggregate across disparate views of a task’s relevant ends, they promise improvement on this specific dimension of predictability. Whatever the other virtues and drawbacks of machine decision-making, this gain should be recognized and factored into governance.

The essay has two parts. In the first, we draw a distinction between determinacy and certainty as epistemic properties and fashioning a taxonomy of decision types. In the second part, we bring the formal point alive through a case study of criminal sentencing.

The Limits of Retributivism

报应主义的限制

作者：Jacob Bronsther

摘要：“限制性的报应主义者”认为，报应比例的模糊代表了一个道德上的机会。他们坚称，国家可以出于预防犯罪和其他非报应性的目的而伤害罪犯，只要刑罚存在于报应性“非不应得”惩罚的广阔范围之内。然而，在本文中，我主张，报应主义只能在这一范围内为最小伤害的刑罚奠定正当性基础。从报应的角度来看，施加一个超出这一最小限度的刑罚是残忍的。它会对罪犯造成更大程度的伤害，但却不会由此增加报应主义目标的实现。因此，如果我们的非报应政策目标需要更严厉的刑罚，那么犯罪者的报应性的应得就不能提供理由，我们需要另一种理论来对此进行解释，而如果有的话，那就是，将伤害罪犯作为实现人们所期望的非报应性的善的一种手段是允许的。

“Limiting retributivists” believe that the vagueness of retributive proportionality represents a moral opportunity. They maintain that the state can permissibly harm an offender for the sake of crime prevention and other nonretributive goods, so long as the sentence resides within the broad range of retributively “not undeserved” punishments. However, in this essay, I argue that retributivism can justify only the least harmful sentence within such a range. To impose a sentence beyond this minimum would be cruel from a retributive perspective. It would harm an offender to a greater degree without thereby increasing the realization of our retributivist ends. Thus, if our nonretributive policy aims required a harsher sentence, the offender’s retributive desert could not provide the rationale, and we would need another theory that explains why, if at all, harming an offender as a means of realizing the desired nonretributive good is permissible.

Prosecutor Mercy

检察官的从宽

作者：Lee Kovarsky

摘要：虽然刑事司法改革可能会顺风顺水，但在美国，从宽的权力仍然被锁在了一个不稳定的从宽模型中。集中化的领导应该更加大胆，或者集中化的机构应该精简，这些都在讨论之中——但是，如果更基本的从宽问题是集中化本身呢？在本文中，我将探讨这个问题。在这一过程中，我捍卫了“定罪后的从宽是合理的”这一规范前提，并讨论了随之而来的制度设计和政治经济问题。我最终鼓励各司法辖区在他们的从宽机制之上建立分散化的从宽权力，并将这一新的权利赋予地方检察官。我提出的不是一个单一的建议，而是一整套有关从宽权力分散化的原则。半个世纪以来对过度犯罪化、强制最低刑罚以及放大累犯的迷恋，已使得美国的监狱人口臃肿不堪，而州长和总统根本无法作出与此相匹配的刑罚减免。

The tailwinds might be behind criminal justice reform, but American mercy power remains locked in a sputtering clemency model. Centralized leadership should be braver or the centralized institutions should be streamlined, the arguments go—but what if the more basic mercy problem is centralization itself? In this essay, I explore that question. In so doing, I defend the normative premise that post-conviction mercy is justified, and I address the questions of institutional design and political economy that follow. I ultimately encourage jurisdictions to layer decentralized mercy powers on top of their clemency mechanisms, and for the newer authority to be vested in local prosecutors. I present less a single proposal than a collection of principles for mercy decentralization. Governors and presidents simply cannot deliver the punishment remissions appropriate for an American prison population bloated by a half-century love affair with over-criminalization, mandatory minimums, and recidivism enhancements.

After the Crime: Rewarding Offenders’ Positive Post-Offense Conduct

犯罪之后：奖励后续的积极行为

作者：Paul H. Robinson和Muhammad Sarahne

摘要：虽然犯罪人在犯罪前和犯罪期间的行为是刑法和量刑规则传统的重点，但对对犯罪后行为的审查其实也同样重要，其同样可以促进刑事司法目标的实现。在犯罪后，不同的罪犯会有不同的选择和不同的经历，这些不同意味着，刑事司法系统中的法官、矫正官、缓刑与假释管理者以及其他决策者，应当对他们适当采取不同的处遇。积极的事后行为应该得到承认和奖励，这不仅是为了鼓励这种行为，也是事关公平和公正的处遇。本文描述了四种值得特别认可和优惠对待的积极犯罪后行为：负责任的罪犯，即在定罪过程中避免了进一步的欺骗和对他人的损害的罪犯；偿还了债务的罪犯，即遭受了全部应有的惩罚（根据正义的真正原则而非实际施加的刑罚）的罪犯；改过自新的罪犯，即采取积极的措施摆脱了自身犯罪性的罪犯；被救赎的罪犯，即出于真正真正的懊悔试图为所犯之罪赎罪的罪犯。本文考虑了应当如何具体地来给予这些犯罪人以特殊照顾这一问题。积极的犯罪后行为或许可以这些措施来得到奖励，如选择和塑造制裁方法，给予优先接受教育、培训、治疗以及其他计划的权利，消除或者限制刑罚完毕后所继续存在的由定罪所带来的附随影响。

Although an offender’s conduct before and during the crime is the traditional focus of criminal law and sentencing rules, an examination of post-offense conduct can also be important in promoting criminal justice goals. After the crime, different offenders make different choices and have different experiences, and those differences can suggest appropriately different treatment by judges, correctional officials, probation and parole supervisors, and other decision makers in the criminal justice system.

Positive post-offense conduct ought to be acknowledged and rewarded, not only to encourage it but also as a matter of fair and just treatment. This essay describes four kinds of positive post-offense conduct that merit special recognition and preferential treatment: the responsible offender, who avoids further deceit and damage to others during the process leading to conviction; the debt-paid offender, who suffers the full punishment deserved (according to true principles of justice rather than the sentence actually imposed); the reformed offender, who takes affirmative steps to leave criminality behind; and the redeemed offender, who out of genuine remorse tries to atone for the offense.

The essay considers how one might operationalize a system for giving special accommodation to such offenders. Positive post-offense conduct might be rewarded, for example, through the selection and shaping of sanctioning methods, through giving preference in access to education, training, treatment, and other programs, and through elimination or restriction of collateral consequences of conviction that continue after the sentence is completed.

The Conventional Problem with Corporate Sentencing (and One Unconventional Solution)

法人量刑的传统问题与非传统解决方案

作者：W. Robert Thomas

摘要：最近一波对于法人刑法的表达主义解说建立在这样一种期望之上，即认为惩罚法人能够表达一种有别于民事强制的谴责。但可惜的是，迄今为止，现实中的法人审判从未实现过这一表达主义期望。鉴于现有的惯常做法赋予了我们的惩罚实践以一定的意义，对于法人的判决很少以契合这些惯常做法的要求的方式施加严厉的处遇。因此，标准的法人制裁其实并不利于施加——反而经常可能会减损——污名化的打击，而这种污名化的打击正是为法人刑法进行辩护时所依赖的。针对法人审判中的这一传统问题，一个普遍的回应做法是提出更多、更严厉的法人惩罚。然而，这种方法忽略了法人惩罚从现有关于个人惩罚的规范与惯例中衍生出其污名化力量的程度。如果想要改善对法人的惩罚，那么表现主义者可能会转而寻求要么利用要么摧毁那些赋予现有制裁意义的根本性惯例。前种策略的一个例子是，通过采取一种在法人领域目前还尚不存在的刑事惯例——即广泛地、侮辱性地应用诸如“小偷”或者“恶棍”这样的绰号——来重振长期被忽视的法人羞辱提案。后种策略的一个例子则是，加入刑事司法改革者的行列，一起改变近几十年来那些使得审判实践变得越发严厉的惯例。

A recent wave of expressive accounts of corporate criminal law operate on the promise that corporate punishment can express a unique form of condemnation not capturable through civil enforcement. Unfortunately, the realities of corporate sentencing have thus far failed to make good on this expressive promise. Viewed in light of existing conventions that imbue meaning into our practices of punishment, corporate sentences rarely impose hard treatment in a manner or degree that these conventions seem to require. Accordingly, standard corporate sanctions turn out to be ill-suited to deliver—and, often, will likely undermine—the stigmatic punch upon which expressive defenses of corporate criminal law depend. A common response to this conventional problem with corporate sentencing has been to propose more, and harsher, corporate punishments. However, this approach overlooks the extent to which corporate punishment derives its stigmatic force from preexisting norms and conventions concerning individual punishment.

If trying to improve corporate punishment, then, expressivists might instead seek either to leverage or to dismantle the underlying conventions that give existing sanctions meaning. An example of the former strategy would be to revitalize long-neglected proposals for corporate shaming by adopting a criminal convention currently absent from the corporate space—namely, the pervasive, stigmatic application of epithets like “thief” or “felon.” An example of the latter would be to join criminal justice reformers in targeting conventions that, in recent decades, have enabled increasingly draconian sentencing practices. On this view, dissolving corporate sentencing’s conventional problem may represent a further, incidental benefit of systemic criminal justice reform.

Bringing People Down: Degrading Treatment and Punishment

贬低人格：侮辱性的处遇与惩罚

作者：John Vorhaus

摘要：根据《欧洲人权公约》第3条的规定，有辱人格的处遇与惩罚是绝对禁止的。本文探讨了这类处遇与惩罚的性质及其内在错误。欧洲人权法院（法院）根据第3条的规定提出的属于实施有辱人格的处遇与惩罚的案件，包括审讯、监禁、体罚、裸身搜查以及不提供充足的医疗保障。法院一般承认监禁天然地就有贬低人格意义，但并不认为这违反了第3条的规定，但它也确定了一个门槛，在这个门槛上的惩罚，对人格的贬低就是过于严重而应当不被允许的。我将说明法院所具有的将不被允许的人格贬低视为一种象征性的尊严伤害的观念。受害者被当作低人一等的人来对待，仿佛他们不具有应属于人类的地位，既不被有尊严地对待，也没有被给予对尊严应有的尊重。人格贬低是一个关系性的概念：由于针对他们的处遇在目的上就是为了贬低其人格，以及这些处遇也确实会产生贬低人格的效应，受害者在其他人的眼中被贬低了。因此，我认为，这是对法院在裁定违反第3条的惩罚时所采用的人格贬低之概念的最好说明。

Under Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights, degrading treatment and punishment is absolutely prohibited. This paper examines the nature of and wrong inherent in treatment and punishment of this kind. Cases brought before the European Court of Human Rights (the Court) as amounting to degrading treatment and punishment under Article 3 include instances of interrogation, conditions of confinement, corporal punishment, strip searches, and a failure to provide adequate health care. The Court acknowledges the degradation inherent in imprisonment generally, and does not consider this to be in violation of Article 3, but it also identifies a threshold at which degradation is so severe as to render impermissible punishments that cross this threshold. I offer an account of the Court’s conception of impermissible degradation as a symbolic dignitary harm. The victims are treated as inferior, as if they do not possess the status owed to human beings, neither treated with dignity nor given the respect owed to dignity. Degradation is a relational concept: the victim is brought down in the eyes of others following treatment motivated by the intention to degrade, or treatment which has a degrading effect. This, so I will argue, is the best account of the concept of degradation as deployed by the Court when determining punishments as in violation of Article 3.

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