Bentham rejected desert as grounds for punishment

Evidence

Strictly speaking, the punished individual does not deserve punishment, that is, pain; it is no less absurd to say that he deserves pain than to say that he would deserve the smart of the surgeon’s cut if he were ill: ‘No man deserves punishment’, says Bentham. ‘When a surgeon cuts into a limb, is it because the patient has deserved the smart? No, but that the limb may be healed.’ — Jeremy Bentham, The Panopticon Writings, 25

Categorization

• DEFINE: Establishes Bentham’s consequentialist theory of punishment in his own words — the surgeon analogy is the clearest statement of it.
• CANDY: ‘No man deserves punishment’ — a startling one-liner that overturns retributive intuition and makes for striking dinner-table conversation.