While theorising punishment, Immanuel Kant argued that “even if a desert island community were to disband, its members should first execute the last murderer left in its jails, “for otherwise they might all be regarded as participators in the [unpunished] murder”.
The “symbolism of punishment”, of what it speaks of both the criminal and the community, was of importance to Kant. Years later, for Joel Feinberg, this is precisely what has escaped the ken of philosophers such as Antony Flew and SI Benn.