Thought crimes are the stuff of dystopian fiction, not contemporary law. Or so we’re told. Yet our criminal legal system may in a sense punish thought regularly, even as our existing criminal theory lacks the resources to recognize this state of affairs for what it is — or to explain what might be wrong with it. The beginning of wisdom lies in the seeming rhetorical excesses of those who complain that certain terrorism and hate crime laws punish offenders for their malevolent intentions while purporting to punish them for their conduct. Behind this too-easily-written-off complaint is a half-buried precept of criminal jurisprudence, one that this Essay aims to excavate, elaborate, and defend: that the proper target of an offender’s punishment is always the criminal action itself, not the offender’s associated mental state conceived as a separate wrong. Taken seriously, this precept would change how we punish an assortment of criminal offenses, from attempts to hate crimes to terrorism. It also would change how we conceive the criminal law’s core axioms, especially the poorly understood but surprisingly important doctrine of concurrence.

中文翻译：

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思想、犯罪和思想犯罪

思想犯罪是反乌托邦小说的内容，而不是当代法律。或者我们被告知。然而，我们的刑事法律体系在某种意义上可能会定期惩罚思想，即使我们现有的犯罪理论缺乏资源来识别这种事态的本质——或者解释它可能有什么问题。智慧的开端在于那些抱怨某些恐怖主义和仇恨犯罪法惩罚犯罪者的恶意意图，同时又声称要惩罚他们的行为的那些人的言辞似乎过激。在这个太容易被注销的投诉背后，是一条半掩埋的刑事法学戒律，本文旨在挖掘、阐述和捍卫这一戒律：惩罚罪犯的适当目标始终是犯罪行为本身，不是将犯罪者的相关精神状态视为单独的错误。认真对待，这条戒律将改变我们惩罚各种刑事犯罪的方式，从企图仇恨犯罪到恐怖主义。它还将改变我们对刑法核心公理的看法，尤其是对一致理解知之甚少但非常重要的原则。