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Notes -
I hope this isn't too shallow for a top-level comment, but I wanted to share a personal observation about shifts in political views. Specifically, in the last couple of years, I've become a LOT more authoritarian on crime. Part of this is probably me getting older (damn kids, stop cycling on the sidewalk!), but I'd single out two main factors.
(1) A big part of it has been related to noticing shifting views on the issue among city-dwelling liberals (that's my in-group, whether I like it or not). I regularly visit a bunch of US cities for work, and I subscribe to their relevant subreddits, and there's been an incredible shift from "defund-the-police is a solid principle albeit the details need to be worked out" to "lock up the bums now". And similarly, several real life liberal friends who were traditionally pretty anti-police have become much more authoritarian of late, complaining about how e.g. the NYC subway used to be incredibly safe but has now become a creepy unpleasant space to inhabit, and something needs to be done.
(2) I've also had a lot more professional dealings with academic criminologists lately, and damn, it's been a wake-up call. It seems to be one of the most activist domains of academia I've ever encountered (and I deal with sociologists and social psychologists on a regular basis!). Over a few different conferences and dinners, I've chatted with criminologists who were pretty explicit about how they saw their role, namely speaking up for oppressed criminals; empirics or the rights of the wider populace barely came into the conversation. On top of this, there have been some spectacular scandals in academic criminology that have helped confirm my impression of the field. Suddenly, all those papers I happily cited about how prison doesn't work etc. seemed incredibly fragile.
I'm going to add two quick personal longstanding reasons why I'm inclined to be quite authoritarian on crime -
(i) Despite my fallouts with The Left, I'm still broadly a social democrat; I think that an effective state is one that provides good free services to all its citizens, including things like high quality education, healthcare, and public transit. But in order to be democratically sustainable, this requires a certain amount of imposed authority: if public schools become known as a magnet for drugs and gang violence, then middle-class parents will pull their kids out and send them to private schools, and won't give their votes or (more importantly) their organising energy to maintaining school quality. If subways become excessively creepy and weird and violent, the middle classes will get Ubers, and vote for candidates who defund public transit. In short, if the middle classes (who have options) decide not to make use of public options, then public options will die their democratic death. Speaking as someone who likes public options, I think it's essential that fairly strong state authority is exerted in public utilities to ensure that they are seen as viable by the middle class.
(ii) I have a weird sympathy towards Retributivism as a theory of justice and crime. More specifically, I have a lot of negative animus towards what I see as excessively utilitarian approaches to criminal justice, that regard criminals as just another type of citizen to be managed. As soon as we stop regarding criminals as people, but just factors of (dis)production, then I think we do them and our society a disservice; it's treating them as cattle. Instead, I'm sympathetic towards a more contractualist approach that mandates we treat all citizens as autonomous individuals who enter into an implicit social contract by virtue of enjoying the benefits of society, such that we would be doing them a disservice of sorts if we didn't punish them for their crimes. Let me try to put that in a maxim: you're an adult, you're a citizen; you fucked up, now you pay the price. If we didn't make you pay the price, we'd be treating you like a child or an animal.
Obviously lots more to be said here, but I'll save my follow-ups for the comments. Curious what others think.
I guess "stop regarding X as people" is sufficiently poorly defined that you can argue this (you can also claim "being against gay marriage is not regarding gay people as people", "not letting transwomen compete in female sports is not regarding transwomen as people", etc.) but it seems to require some incredible contortion to argue that Utilitarianism, which wants to treat criminals the exact same as everyone else is not treating criminals as people.
It seems to me that you're necessarily making the claim that Utilitarian doesn't treat anyone "as a person". Which, sure, poorly defined words let you say basically whatever you want (see: lots of philosophy). But then "Utilitarians stop regarding criminals as people" is a pretty misleading sentence when what you actually believe is that Utilitarians don't regard anyone as a person.
The plain version of your claim is
This makes it clear that "respectful" is being used in an extremely unusual way. And this wouldn't be too bad, except you clearly mean for "X is respectful" to imply "X is good" (or, at least, "X should be pursued via public policy").
I wish I had a name for this rhetorical trick -- where you convert a controversial word into a less controversial word, with the goal of claiming the original point. It's kind of a very specific form of Motte and Bailey.
Another example is that it's very controversial whether (e.g.) bats are conscious, so instead philosophers argue over whether bats have "qualia". To which I say: either "X is conscious iff X experiences qualia", in which case it's really unclear what value the concept of "qualia" is bringing to the discussion, or they're not equivalent, in which case claiming bats don't have qualia (and letting the shared valence finish the argument for you -- "bats aren't conscious") is bad (though effective) argumentation.
A third example is when politicians claim that "X deserves Y, and then letting "deserve" mutate into "good" in people's minds, so that people hear "giving Y to X is good policy".
Punishing someone who commits a wrong shows that you are treating Alice with agency which I agree is some measure of respect. Not punishing Alice ever when she wrongs someone implies the authority figure doesn't believe Alice is capable of making another decision.
We don't punish or show disappointment in an infant who poops their pants because they don't have any ability to control that action. Never punishing someone is the same thing morally.
There's a measure of respect inherent with punishment that the punished has the capacity to not do wrong.
That's still a motte and bailey because the original phrasing was "doing them a disservice". Normally, punishing someone is doing them a disservice.
Interesting, from my background punishment was something done out of love or at least concern for the punished person's future, I suppose that's limited to punishments short of death penalties. Not a pleasant or enjoyable experience but a necessary one like learning to eat healthy foods or exercise.
"Has a minor element of X" is not the same as "is for X".
Even if it's not the death penalty, part of the reason for the punishment is disabling the criminal (he can't rob you if he's locked up) and deterring other criminals. These can't reasonably be described as being done out of love, except in the Spanish Inquisition sense of "we kill you out of love".
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