Treatment and Accountability

Our attitudes to wrongdoers, and what social and institutional practices we apply to them or engage them in, depend on whether (in our eyes) they are responsible for their wrongdoing. They also depend on whether we see them as fully or partially responsible agents more generally. Very crudely, we hold to account agents who are responsible for their conduct to account, where we treat the non-responsible. This chapter explores the relationship between treatment and accountability by critically engaging with P F Strawson’s influential views on the issue. It argues that the appropriate distinction between treatment and accountability is based primarily on the content of interpersonal exploration of wrongdoing rather than the attitudes and practices that are involved in these practices.