Collective punishment

Collective punishment is a punishment or sanction imposed on a group or whole community for acts allegedly perpetrated by a member or some members of that group or area, which could be an ethnic or political group, or just the family, friends and neighbors of the perpetrator, as well as entire cities and communities where the perpetrator(s) allegedly committed the crime. Because individuals who are not responsible for the acts are targeted, collective punishment is not compatible with the basic principle of individual responsibility. The punished group may often have no direct association with the perpetrator other than living in the same area and can not be assumed to exercise control over the perpetrator's actions. Collective punishment is prohibited by treaty in both international and non-international armed conflicts, more specifically Common Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention and Article 4 of the Additional Protocol II.

The Hague Conventions are often cited for guidelines concerning the limits and privileges of an occupier's rights with respect to the local (occupied) property. One of the restrictions on the occupier's use of natural resources is the Article 50 prohibition against collective punishment protecting private property.

According to Médecins Sans Frontières:

International law posits that no protected person may be punished for acts that he or she did not commit. It ensures that the collective punishment of a group of persons for a crime committed by an individual is forbidden...This is one of the fundamental guarantees established by the Geneva Conventions and their protocols. This guarantee is applicable not only to protected persons but to all individuals, no matter what their status, or to what category of persons they belong...

Modern legal systems usually limit criminal liability to individuals. An example of this is the prohibition on "Corruption of Blood" in the Treason Clause of the United States Constitution. Moral philosophers will usually use notions of intention or knowledge to establish individual moral responsibility. This agency based theory from Kantian ethics may not be the only way to assess responsibility. Ruth Gavison wanted the Israeli legal system to be based on the moral compass of Jewish heritage:

"I hope that in another generation, when the Jewish children of today are sitting on the bench of the Supreme Court, they will know how to express Kant's Categorical Imperative in the 'Jewish' language of Hillel the Elder. When they want to strike down collective punishment, I hope they will be able to invoke the Jewish maxim: 'Each by his own sin will die'. not just universal literature on the subject."

Collective liability may be effective as a deterrent, if it creates the incentive for the group to monitor the activities of other members. When collective fines are imposed on select groups of elites it can create an incentive for them to identify perpetrators but the effectiveness declines with an increase in the size of the group and their relative wealth.

Richard Posner and others consider collective fines to be the most effective type of collective punishment for deterring bad behavior when they are sufficiently costly and target those in a position to identify perpetrators.