Free will, punishment and criminal responsibility

Retributive attitudes are deeply held and widespread in the general population and most legal systems incorporate retributive elements. It is probably also the dominant theory of punishment among contemporary philosophers of criminal justice. However, retributivism relies on conceptions of free will and responsibility that have, for millennia, fundamentally divided those who have thought seriously about the subject. Our legal system upholds the principle that the responsibility of the offender has to be proven beyond reasonable doubt, before the accused can be punished. In view of the intractable doubts surrounding the soundness of retributivism’s very conception of responsibility, my thesis argues that it is ethically dubious to punish individuals for solely retributive reasons. Instead, my thesis proposes that a person should only be punished if the main theories of punishment agree that punishing that person is appropriate – I call this ‘the convergence requirement’. This approach, I argue, is in accordance with the considerations underlying the beyond reasonable doubt standard. In addition to considering the question of ‘whom to punish’ my thesis considers what methods of responding to criminal behaviour are acceptable. In particular, it attempts to explain, without appealing to the contested notions of free will or retributive desert, what is problematic about ‘manipulative’ methods of dealing with criminal offenders (focussing in particular on the possibility of modifying their behaviour through neurological interventions). The final part of this thesis also gives an overview of some of the practical implications for Scots criminal law of taking doubts about free will and retributivism seriously. Given the severe treatment that offenders undergo within the Scottish penal system (e.g. deprivation of liberty, stigma) and the high rate of recidivism, it is important to consider whether our current penal practices are justified, what alternatives are available and what goals and values should guide attempts at reforming the system

Demand Side Management: A Case for Disruptive Behaviour

The UK electricity system is undergoing a significant transformation. Increasing penetration of renewable generation and integration of new consumer technologies (e.g. electric vehicles) challenge the traditional way of balancing electricity in the grid, whereby supply matches demand. Demand-side management (DSM) has been shown to offer a promising solution to the above problem. However, models proposed in literature typically consider an isolated system whereby a single aggregator coordinates homogeneous consumers. As a result potential externalities of DSM are overlooked. This work explores the value of DSM in the context of an interacting electricity system, where utilities compete for cheap electricity in the wholesale market. A stylized model of the UK electricity system is proposed, whereby a traditional supplier competes with a ‘green’ supplier in the wholesale market. The modelling was able to show that with enough dispatchable capacity the traditional supplier was able to benefit from instructing his consumers to increase demand peaks, which had an adverse effect on the system