The Moral Ambivalence Of Crime In An Unjust Society Summary

Colin Blevins

JUST 200

May 2, 2016

Final Essay

In “The Moral Ambivalence of Crime in an Unjust Society” by Jeffrey Reiman he offers a detailed explanation of many different ways to define justice and allows the reader to fully comprehend the meaning of it. Before he even began explaining justice he gave his own experience with crime as way to convey to the reader how his rights had been violated and he had been filled with anger at the criminals instead of the justice that failed him. This first hand encounter with crime allowed Reiman to prove to readers that justice is what is what protects us and it is the criminals who are the problem. To see that even a man who had thought and written about nothing but crime for thirty-five years could still become

a victim to a crime. This however was just an introduction into his take on the moral nature of crime where he explained the importance of being able to distinguish between committing a crime in the legal sense and committing a crime in the moral sense.

It is important to know the difference because one must be able to understand whether a person has violated a criminal law or is guilty of a moral wrong. If it is a moral wrong there is a lot of other factors that must be considered such as the social context in which it occurred or if they are victims of injustice. Reiman supports the social contract mental experiment that allows citizens to think of themselves as the result of a unanimous and reasonable agreement among all its citizens. This contract allows us to have the standards and fairness we value so much as a reward for upholding the agreement. In addition to these standards and fairness the social contract also includes rights and responsibilities that we are expected to uphold as part of the agreement. These rights and responsibilities and the role they play in the social contract were fully analyzed by Reiman. He explained that the social contract comes with certain obligations that, in turn, grant citizens with the benefit of the standards and fairness they value so much. However, Reiman believed that there is also a moral obligation to obey the law. Even after being robbed he still had to distinguish

whether a legal crime was committing or a moral crime. A citizen must be able to trust the justice system in order to uphold the social contract. If a person has been wronged by not being held to the same standards or fairness as others then they might feel a moral obligation to violate the agreement because the justice system has violated their trust. Reiman uses two major versions of the social contract to further analyze justice. The first is Hobbes’s theory that if one obeys the law then the government should protect them however they do not leave the state of nature that leaves them vulnerable. The second is Locke’s theory who argued that the voluntary agreement among citizens to give up some of their freedom in return for protection by the government. Reiman used these two theories to conclude his definition of justice by explaining that both Hobbes and Locke were right. Both of these theories exemplifies the truth in the other which is that without peace, justice will be uncertain and without justice, peace will be uncertain.